Come Home
by Khgirl08
Summary: North Korea: One chance to save Steve. When that chance goes wrong, how will Five-0 cope? Will they? -Tag to Ki'ilua; AU from that point on.-
1. Prologue

"We've got eyes on the truck!" shouted Lori into her headset.

"Bad news, though. This here bird's not real good at dodging trees, and if they make it into dense foliage…well, I dunno if we can set 'er back up." The helo pilot pressed on, making Lori clutch the arms of her seat. "How are you with the big guns?"

"What?!"

"You ever shot a missile before? Because I reckon that's gonna be our only shot of stopping this crew."

Lori swallowed deeply. "Never done it before, but there's no time like the present, right?"

"Good girl," nodded the pilot. "It's no different than a regular gun; just point and shoot and you'll do fine. I see a bridge up ahead; we take that out, they'll have no choice but to turn around and go back."

She tore her headset off and clambered to the back. Her hands were shaking before she picked up the bazooka, and the whole gun trembled like a newborn calf. _Easy there, Lori_, she thought. _This is our last chance to save Steve. You get one shot._

"GO!" the pilot shouted. Lori swallowed again, aimed the bazooka, and fired at the first truck in the convoy, praying that she wasn't killing Steve.

She shouldn't have worried.

* * *

"You missed?!" asked Danny for the twelfth time. "You were shooting at a close-range target. With a bazooka. And you _missed_?!"

"Leave it, brah," Chin said quietly. Danny made an exasperated noise and turned his attention to the forest floor below. Lori nodded her thanks and pulled her legs closer to her chest.

The kickback from the gun had been heavier than she had expected. A lot heavier. Her shot had gone so far off course that the trucks probably hadn't even noticed the resulting explosion. Hell, she had barely noticed the explosion, though that was mostly because she was watching a caravan of trucks steal her friend into the North Korean jungle.

Joe's friend had turned around long enough to pick up the rest of the crew, and though they were searching for the trail they all knew the caravan had had plenty of time to reach the airfield by now. Even if they knew the precise location of said airfield, they would never reach it in time to seize Wo Fat and rescue Steve.

"We need to go back." Joe's sudden bark startled everyone aboard. "At this rate, we're making ourselves a target. We aren't going to be able to help Steve by getting ourselves caught by the North Koreans or by crashing because we've run out of fuel."

"So you're just suggesting we run like a bunch of little girls?" sneered Danny. "Screw you, I'm staying."

"I don't think so, buckaroo," said the pilot. "Joe's right. We're starting to run low on fuel as it is."

"But we can't just leave him!" Chin said. Joe grunted from the cockpit. "Look, we came all the way out here to save him, and we aren't going home until we do. It's as simple as that."

"It's many things, kid, but this ain't simple." The pilot turned to smile, and Lori knew from the expression on his face that no matter how much Danny and Chin pled, he wouldn't be leaving them in North Korea.

"Think of it this way," Joe said. "If Wo Fat wanted him dead, he'd be laying back in that complex with Jenna Kaye. The fact that he went to all this trouble to keep him around is a good thing."

"No, Steve being with us, here, in this copter, that would be a good thing!" Danny shouted. "You can't possibly expect us to blithely go along with this and pretend like we weren't one fumble-fingered attempt away from saving him!"

"No one expects you to. But you can't go yelling about him being in North Korea. He shouldn't have been there in the first place," Joe said patiently, "and he's probably already en route to a new paradise altogether."

"Prepare for landing," said the pilot. Danny shouted in outrage as the copter landed in the middle of the chicken coop. Kono ran out from the house, beaming.

"Hey, Steve, welcome…where's Steve?" She and Chin exchanged one of their silent communiques before she turned to Joe. "What happened after I lost communication with you guys?"

"Doesn't matter. The point is, I won't be returning with you guys." Joe smiled congenially, and Danny started to fly into another rage.

"Danny, just stop." Lori uncurled herself and stared at him dully. "You have to go back, you have Grace. Besides, we have to explain to the governor why our boss isn't our boss anymore. This is going to be a nightmare."

Aside from Chin and Danny's glares, no one responded to Lori.

She couldn't blame them.

* * *

Steve closed his eyes as the truck shuddered to a halt. Any last hopes of a rescue were gone now. He was alone.

Utterly alone.

The door opened, and heavy footsteps echoed across the metal to him. One sharp blow to the face opened his eyes. Wo Fat was staring down at him gleefully. Evilly.

"Your friends came close, McGarrett. That pretty blonde one? The girl? She was, as you Americans would say, within spitting distance."

"What did you do to her?" Steve asked quietly.

"Do to _her_?" Wo Fat chuckled. "No, my friend, it's what she tried to do. She tried to take out a bridge, presumably to make us turn tail, but she didn't expect so much kickback. She missed her shot. And now here we are."

"Here we are indeed." Steve held Wo Fat's gaze for a split second before attempting to tackle him. The other man was too nimble, too uninjured for Steve to be successful; he dodged and swept Steve's feet out from under him.

Before Steve knew exactly what had happened, Wo Fat had a needle in his neck.

And then everything became fuzzy. Blurred. Warm.

Steve was vaguely aware of being stood up and led from the truck, and even less aware of falling flat on his face from the truck. The last thing he remembered seeing was a cushy jet, and then everything disappeared except for a sinister voice that intruded his mind, forcing its way in and becoming a part of him.

Can't fight.

Weak.

Shelburne.

Who. How. Why.

Shelburne. Shelburne. ShelburneIDON'TKNOWShelburne

Nothing.

* * *

Author's Note: I'm actually pretty new to the Hawaii 5-0 fandom, having only discovered the show in mid-March of 2013. However, I fell in love with the series by viewing only the last half of a Season 3 episode, and so immediately devoured all the seasons available.  
I actually had a dream about a confrontation between two of the characters (I'm not going to say who, because that would totally spoil the story), and when I woke up I wanted to figure out what would lead to that scene. I worked with a couple of scenarios before I realized the perfect AU start place would be Ki'ilua, specifically the last ten minutes or so. And thus, this story was born.

If you like this prologue, review or fave or follow it or do something so that I know people are paying attention, and I'll continue publishing it...eventually. I have other writing obligations, unfortunately, so I'll have to balance stuff out.


	2. Danny 1

Everything hurt.

Pain was everything, hurt was everything, torture was everything.

Everything.

Couldn't think. Couldn't think. Had to think. Couldn't not think.

Shelburne. Shelburne. Who. Where. Couldn't think. Had to think.

Another punch to the gut. And another. And everything hurt.

Shelburne.

* * *

"Danno!"

"Hey, Monkey." Danny picked up Grace and swung her in a circle, smiling at her excited squeal. She was so much bigger than he remembered. How could a little girl grow so much in six months? "How's my favorite person on the planet?"

"Good! Mom told me to say hi, but their flight wasn't delayed like yours so they had to go." Grace stuck out her lip to pout, and he was briefly reminded of her namesake. Briefly.

"So, what, Mommy and Stan just left you here, all by yourself?" he groused.

"No one said she was all by herself, brah."

Danny blinked at the unexpected voice and looked up slowly, Grace still wrapped up in his arms. Kono stood next to the baggage carousel, her grin as bright as ever. To her left were Chin Ho and Malia, who had grabbed Danny's suitcase, and to her right stood Kamekona, still wearing his bright yellow shrimp shirt.

"Aloha, bruddah!" Kamekona stomped forward and wrapped his arms around Danny and Grace, ignoring the latter's gasp for air. "You really need to come back here more than once every two years."

"It's probably too busy back in Jersey, right Danny?" Chin's eyes widened at Danny's choked expression and he pulled gently on Kamekona's shoulder. "I don't think you're going to be able to welcome him back for much longer if you keep that up."

"Oh, sorry." Kamekona released the captive Williams, both of whom coughed on their intake of air. "I better get going and fire up the shrimp truck. Grace here told me you've really been missing it."

"She did, huh?" he sputtered, massaging his throat. Kamekona nodded and waved goodbye before stomping down the terminal. Kono replaced him, embracing Danny in a much gentler manner. "I don't understand what you're all doing here. Shouldn't you be working or surfing or something?"

"And miss the triumphant return of Danno? Hardly!" Kono squeezed him for a second before letting go and grinning again. "Kamekona's right, you know. It's been too long."

"Yeah, I guess it has," he said quietly. Her eyes filled with understanding, and she exchanged a look with Chin-Ho. Malia knew the expression, as she approached to give Danny a quick peck on the cheek before putting her arm around Grace's shoulders.

"Hey, would you mind finding a bathroom with me? I never like to go alone." Grace looked to Danny, as if asking permission. He sighed and nodded, and she and Malia took off.

"So, what, you guys gonna give me the third degree or something?"

"Not exactly." Chin Ho leaned closer to Danny and Kono, his expression grim. "We just don't want Grace to hear this."

"You know something about Steve, don't you?" he asked immediately. Chin and Kono exchanged another look. "I've been scouring the airwaves, the newspapers, everything I could possibly find to see if he's popped up, and I haven't found a thing. What do you guys know?"

"Word on the street has it that Wo Fat's coming back soon. Contacted an old friend a couple days ago, asked to have lunch with him." Kono tossed her hair nervously. "It's surprising that he'd be so bold, especially considering that the entire island knows his game by now."

"What did Joe have to say about it?" Danny responded. "He must have some chatter." Another look passed between the cousins, and he groaned. "Don't tell me he's gone off the grid, too."

"'fraid so, brah," said Chin. "We haven't heard a peep outta him for over a year now."

Danny wiped a hand over his face. "Well, that is…that's fantastic."

"Everyone who has the authority to be on alert for Wo Fat is, but unless he's lost his touch he'll get here regardless." Kono sighed and rolled her eyes at Chin. "I tried to take the next two weeks off to look for him, but the bossman said no way."

"I already told you, Wo Fat's probably got eyes on all of us. If we change our patterns at all, it'll get his suspicions up," Chin said flatly. "We'll both be looking, hell, the entire HPD will be looking, but you're not getting time off for it."

"Whoa, whoa, wait a second. You're Kono's boss now?"

Chin shrugged and smiled. "What can I say? Working Five-0 gave me some cred in the department."

"Yeah, but it didn't give me nearly enough of it." Kono complained, but she had a grin plastered on her face. "I still gotta take orders from this brah."

"Okay, well, congratulations," Danny said. "I'm really happy for you and everything, but this Wo Fat thing has got me worried. Grace's day camp lasts through Wednesday, something which I really need to complain to Rachel about, but this also means that I have three days to-"

"Not a good idea," Chin interrupted. Kono narrowed her eyes at him, but he ignored her glare. "Look, Danny, it's just like I told Kono: Wo Fat has a finger in everywhere. He's got eyes and ears all over this island, and there's no way we're going to be able to sneak around under the radar."

"I dunno. I figure, y'know, I just sniff around under the pretense of revisiting my old haunts, and maybe no one pays much attention. I'm just another haole, right?"

Kono started to reply, but Grace's sudden reappearance interrupted her. "We're back, Danno!" Her eyes sparkled as she grabbed Danny's hand, and he couldn't help but smile back. "Are you ready to go to Kamekano's?"

"Am I ready? I've been ready since I landed." He took his suitcase from Chin and let his daughter lead the group from the airport.

He was back.

* * *

A/N: Whoa! I was NOT expecting this kind of response, and so immediately! In honor of the number of alerts, faves, and reviews I received, I'm posting the second chapter. I hope you enjoy it just as much.

The main story takes place about two years and seven months after the events of Ki'ilua. It's mid-June of 2014, for those of you looking at your calendars. The snippets at the beginning of each chapter, however, are not necessarily concurrent with the rest of the chapter. Sometimes the snippets directly relate, sometimes they don't. It will probably be obvious which is the case with a given snippet.


	3. Kono 1

Sharp pain.

Shelburne. Who. How.

I don't know. I don't know.

Shelburne. Head spinning. Heart pounding.

Everything hurt.

Shelburne. Shelburne. Find him.

Find him.

Black.

* * *

"Cuz, let me handle this one solo."

Chin cupped a hand over his phone with a concerned look. "You sure, Kono? I can leave as soon as I'm finished here."

She smiled. "It's just a possible B&E at an abandoned house, right? Some kid probably got bored and called it in on his neighbor's house. You're too busy coordinating everyone else, and you haven't stopped moving since we got in here this morning." He started to protest, but she kept talking. "Really, I'll be fine."

Her cousin stared at her for a moment before smiling slightly. "Mahalo." Kono simply winked and strode from the building, grabbing her badge and gun and losing her smile on the way. It was embarrassing, for both her and Chin, to go from being on the governor's personal task force to working run-of-the-mill calls. She suspected it bothered her more than Chin.

She slammed her car door with a little more force than necessary, leaned her head back and exhaled. If Chin hadn't been so swamped, he would have noticed the address before she did. Her shot of getting to McGarrett's house would be gone. It wasn't as if she was doing anything around the precinct, anyhow. Chin hardly let her out of his sight after the shooting.

Chin meant well. She knew he did. He just didn't understand that if Steve was alive, they didn't have time to waste. They needed to find him. She needed to find him.

If her cousin…if her boss couldn't understand that, she would just have to do things her way.

* * *

The drive to Steve's house was still familiar, perhaps because she made it once a week like clockwork. Wednesday mornings, behind the house, the surf was tight. That's what Steve had always said. She tended to agree with him on that.

She always arrived early and left early, never stayed longer than thirty minutes. Never saw another car, never saw another person. She liked that.

Her assignment changed this pattern in every way. It was late Monday morning, she wasn't wearing a bikini, and there was another car in the driveway when she pulled up. It was a silver rental Camaro, shiny and bright and just screaming "Danny Williams". Kono's suspicions were confirmed when her Jersey friend pulled back a curtain and waved cheekily at her.

"Danny, what are you doing here?" she asked as she entered the house. The detective was lounging on the couch, his feet on the coffee table. "Someone called in a break-in."

"Uh, yeah, that would be me." Danny grinned. "See, I was hoping to get you and Chin out of the office and out here, so we could come up with some kind of plan."

"Some kind of plan." Kono raised her eyebrows, and her old teammate nodded impatiently.

"Yeah, for when Wo Fat arrives. We probably don't have long; hell, he could be here already. I was thinking, maybe we get in touch with Catherine-"

"Uh, yeah, about that," she interrupted. "Catherine's not available right now, and even if she was…well, let's just say she probably wouldn't be too helpful."

Danny blinked at her. "Why not?"

"It's kind of a long story." Kono sat next to him and sighed. "Suffice it to say she was not pleased with us when I told her about Steve. But moving on," she continued before Danny could comment, "I'm all for planning on Wo Fat's return. We just need to be…subtle about it."

"I am all about subtlety, Kono, that's why I called this in as a B&E." She raised her eyebrows again. "Look, I knew Chin would get the address and recognize it, and so you and/or he was bound to respond, and that wouldn't sketch up Wo Fat's radar, right?"

"When I say 'subtle', Danny, I mean we can't involve HPD. At all."

"Well, yeah, but you and Chin are HPD, so unless the two of you plan on quitting sometime soon it's kind of a given."

"Obviously," she scoffed. "But Chin isn't here. Chin barely heard the call, he had so many others to handle, and if he had heard it I wouldn't be out here. He would be chasing you off the property."

Danny squinted. "Why?"

"Chin's changed, Danny. He's not the same guy you remember. He's more serious, more reserved, so by-the-book that even the idea of an undercover op scares him senseless." She chuckled. "The thought of doing something that isn't ordered by some higher-up sends him into conniptions."

"Are you?"

"Am I—what? What are you asking?"

Danny met her confused gaze with solemn eyes. "Are you the same person I remember?"

She chuckled again and looked away, brushing her hair behind an ear. "Of course, brah. Of course."

He stared at her for a moment, and she was beginning to suspect that he didn't believe her before he smiled and dropped his gaze. "Okay, so Chin's outta the loop. You should probably get back to work, then, and tell him that this was a false alarm. Can you meet me in an hour at the shrimp truck?"

"Sure thing." She stood up and sighed as she took a last look around the house. "Nothing's changed in here, has it?"

"Nope." Danny shook his head, his smile growing pained. "I went upstairs. One of his drawers was still hanging open, probably because he was so rushed with that last case." He wiped a hand over his face, and Kono looked away when she saw the glimmer of tears on his cheeks. She couldn't evade his rapidly loudening shouts, unfortunately. "And then that…that traitor dragged him all the way to North Korea, and then that idiot couldn't shoot the bazooka, and now his drawer is still hanging open, two years later, because he forgot to close it on his way out the door! And he might never be back to close it," he finished in a whisper. "He might never be back."

Kono didn't know what to say. She wasn't sure she was supposed to say anything, and she knew she probably couldn't, even if she did know what to say and how. Her eyes, too, were filled with tears by the end of Danny's outburst. Her throat felt like someone had stuffed it with paper.

She bent to kiss the top of his head before walking out. Only her will and years of practice kept her from collapsing with sobs before reaching her car.

And when the sobs hit, they hit hard.

* * *

A/N: I am utterly incapable of expressing how much I appreciate the voluminous amount of support I've received for this story since posting it last week. To those of you who have followed or favorited it, know that I am incredibly grateful even if I haven't written you to tell you. Response like this makes writing even more of a joy than it already is.

Moving on from the sappy acceptance-speech style, I want to give you guys an idea of how updates will happen. I have four unposted chapters (not counting the epilogue) saved to my hard drive currently, and I'd like to keep it that way until I'm done with the story. When I get time to write around my other obligations, I will. I tentatively expect to update this story twice a week since the chapters are so brief, but we'll see what happens.

That's about it. Again, thanks for the support. You are all amazing.


	4. Chin Ho 1

Darkness.

Cold. Damp. Dark.

Scared.

_Burn._

Not again. No not again not again please God no

_Burn._

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

_Burn._

Shelburne.

Don't know can't know won't know don't know

_Burnburnburnburnburnburn._

Nothing.

Shel-_burn_-burne.

Don't know don't know I DON'T KNOW

Find him.

_Burn._

* * *

"What happened to your hand, Kono?"

Chin Ho put his hands on his hips as his cousin looked down at the bloody gauze wrapped around her right hand ruefully. "There was some broken glass on the porch of that house. I tripped on a board while I was checking it out and got this pretty little wound to remember it by. The house was empty, by the way. Didn't look like it was really disturbed, or worth disturbing for that matter. I didn't go any farther than checking the doors and windows."

He took her hand in his and examined it. "Has it stopped bleeding since?"

"Not even a little. I think I'm going to need stitches." Kono sighed. "I'll go to the ER and file my report when I get back."

"I think Malia's on her lunch break. You could try calling her." Kono paled slightly, but he just laughed. "She'd be glad to help you out, it would save you the wait, and I would feel better knowing that you were in good hands."

"What time do you want me back?" she asked slowly.

He glanced at his watch. "We're only on shift for three more hours, so why don't you just take the afternoon off?"

She nodded. "Sure. I'll see you tomorrow, then." And then she was gone.

He finished up the last vestiges of paperwork on his desk and made the necessary phone calls before he took the time to think about his cousin again. She was hiding something, certainly, but he had no idea what it was. Once upon a time, Chin Ho could read his cousin like a book. Now it was like the bulb illuminating her had burned out.

Chin leaned back in his chair and pressed a hand over his eyes. Kono had definitely changed over the last two years, but tripping over a board and slicing her hand like a package of deli meat? That was more than just a change.

That was terrifying.

At least her bad knee hadn't blown out. He would have gone nuts if it had, because it was his job to protect her from injuries. ACL tears, stabbings, gunshots…none of those were supposed to affect Kono on his watch.

She resented him for it. He knew that. He knew that she longed for the freedom they had once enjoyed in Five-0, or even the leeway allotted to her as a regular detective, but the shooting had changed everything. In his family's eyes, he was once again a villain. He knew of the danger she was in and yet did nothing to save her.

Kono had died. Three times.

That he had performed CPR for nearly an hour straight mattered to no one save Kono and Malia. He and the rest of the family understood that he could have stopped things before they got that far. And he didn't. He didn't stop her. He didn't save her from the surgeries, the trauma, the months of rehab.

In some ways, Kono Kalakaua had never come back to life since that day.

"Captain Kelly?" Chin jumped at the quiet voice. Duke Lukela was standing in the doorway to his office, watching him carefully. "Is everything alright?"

"Duke! I'm fine, just lost in thought." He gestured to the chair in front of his desk, which Duke took without further prompting. "What can I do for you, my friend?"

"I just wanted to see what Kono had come across at the house. I heard her radio in at first, but then she went silent."

"Nothing apart from a pile of glass on the porch. She didn't even go inside, since all the doors and windows were locked." Chin furrowed his brow. "Why are you curious about an abandoned house, anyhow?"

"Abandoned? I thought McGarrett was just away," Duke replied. Chin's blood ran cold. "I'm surprised she was able to resist taking a look inside. Heck, I'm even more surprised that you didn't go with her."

"The call was at _McGarrett's_ house?!"

"Well, yes," Duke said slowly. "I remembered the address from the call we got about his old man. We don't get too many calls from that neck of the woods. Didn't you hear the call?"

Chin gaped at the older officer before shaking his head. "I heard it, but I could hardly pay it attention. We've been absolutely swamped today, and when Kono…why didn't she tell me?"

"That I can't tell you." Duke stood up and nodded. "I'd better go, but I suggest you talk to your cousin."

Chin waited only until his door clicked shut before pressing the third speed dial on his phone. Kono's phone went straight to voicemail, and he struggled to control his voice as he asked her to call him immediately. He dialed Malia's number next, and was grumbling under his breath when she picked up. "Hello, Chin."

"Malia! Is Kono still there?"

"She left about five minutes ago. It was a quick job, but that wound was pretty nasty. Where did she happen across a knife, anyhow?"

Chin felt that he would explode. "_Knife?!_"

"Yes, the knife that cut her hand. Did she have trouble taking down a suspect or something?"

"That cut was from glass, Malia. She tripped and landed on some broken glass." Malia made a scoffing noise. "What?"

"Love, glass makes a very jagged cut. Kono's cut was straight, like a knife would be."

"You're sure?"

"Positive. Chin, what's going on?"

"I have to go. I love you." Before she could say another word, he had hung up on her and slammed his hand onto his desk.

Kono had lied to him. She had lied to him about everything.

Before he could calm down enough to work out a way to track his cousin down and get the truth from her, his phone rang. "This is Kelly," he snarled.

"Captain," Duke said, "you need to get your men out here now. We've got a hostage situation at the Waikiki Sun School."

"Copy that. We're on our way." Chin hung up the phone, grabbed his gun and badge, and left his office without a moment to spare.

Whatever Kono was keeping from him would have to wait.

* * *

A/N: You have officially broken my review and alert records for stories on this site. Wow. Thank you all so much.

That being said, I have decided on a tentative schedule for updates: Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays. That gives me time to write, you time to read, and everyone time to have a bit of a break between sessions. Expect the next update, in which we go back to Danno, to be in your inbox in about two days' time.

Thanks for your continued support, everyone.


	5. Danny 2

Sharp pain.

Dizzy. Swirling twirling curling. Dizzy.

Danny Williams.

Danno.

New Jersey. Grace. Rachel. Grace.

Gracie.

Good job.

Dull pain. Cheek hurts. Cheek hurts again. Punches.

Darkness.

* * *

Danny sat at Kamekona's, simply taking in the ocean breeze and tangy smell of salt water. It had been years since he had sat like this, outside where the air was clear and the sky was sunny. Where the beach was steps away. Where he was at peace.

He and the team had sat here many a time, sampling Kamekona's new shrimp or enjoying discount shave ice, usually while going over a case or planning a takedown of some criminal organization. Their plans rarely went as planned, but they worked out in the end.

Most of the time.

The previous night had brought little sleep for Danny. He had told Grace that he was jetlagged, but the truth was he had been plagued with nightmares.

Lori's face as the helo landed on the road in Korea.

Steve's smile as he assured him he would be back after helping Jenna.

Governor Denning's voice as he issued the gag order and disbanded Five-0.

Grace's tears as she tried to understand why her Uncle Steve left without telling her goodbye.

These images had haunted his idle hours for two years. They hadn't pervaded his dreams for months until now.

If Wo Fat was indeed coming back to the islands, he was going to find him.

And even if he wasn't a superSEAL, dammit, he was going to kill that son of a—

"You look like you could use this," said Kamekona as he sat on the opposite side of Danny's table. Danny looked at the bottle of coconut water in his hands suspiciously. "It's good for the soul, bruddah."

"Yeah, I bet it is," he said sarcastically. Kamekona didn't seem to catch his snark, and pushed the bottle across the table. "Thanks."

"I got your back," the large man said with a smile. His face fell slightly as he looked out to sea, and he shook his head. "I'd hate to be one of them parents."

"What parents?" Danny asked as he opened the water.

"The ones whose kids are at Waikiki Sun School's day camp. Just heard about it on the news a couple minutes ago, about that hostage situation."

"_What?!_" Danny leaped to his feet, spilling the contents of his bottle everywhere. "Grace is there!"

Kamekona's face immediately paled. "Oh, no no no!" he said, horrified. "I didn't know, man, I would have told you sooner!"

"I have to go!" He turned to run to his rental, but ran straight into Kono instead.

"Whoa, where's the fire?" she asked as she jumped to her feet. Danny brushed her hand aside and kept going. "Danny!"

"Grace's school, though it's a hostage situation instead of a fire!" Kono gasped and caught up with him, blocking his car door shut. "Hey!"

"Let's go in my car. I have the flashers and the badge." He didn't take time to answer before running to her familiar car, throwing the passenger's door open and jumping in. Kono tossed him her phone as she followed suit and revved her car to life. "Call Chin and put it on speaker, will you?"

Though turning on the phone took longer than it should have thanks to trembling fingers, Danny finally got the requested cousin dialed. His answer was less than cordial. "Kono, where the hell are you?! I've been trying to get hold of you for twenty minutes!"

"Calm down, cuz!" she said loudly. "I was meeting Danny at the shrimp truck for lunch when we heard. We're on our way now."

"Why are you bringing him along for the ride? He has no jurisdiction here, remember?"

"I have more jurisdiction at my daughter's day camp than you do, Chin!" Danny snapped. "What's happening over there?!"

"Grace is here?" Chin shouted something away from the phone before returning to speak. "Lone gunman, holding about ten kids and a counselor hostage. The others are out of the school, but Grace must still be inside."

"Shots fired!" shouted someone on the other end.

"Dammit!" Danny yelled.

"What's your ETA?"

"Four minutes, give or take," Kono said.

"Get her safe, Chin." For the second time in an hour, tears welled up in his eyes. "Please keep her safe."

"I'll do my best," came the reply. The line cut off then, and Danny dropped the phone into Kono's cup holder.

Instead of having nightmares in his sleep, Danny found himself living one out in real time. His only child was at the mercy of a mad gunman, and he had no way to save her. He was weaponless, helpless, and hapless in the face of such a threat.

Danno wasn't going to be able to save the day this time.

* * *

A/N: This is a bit of a short chapter, but Danny's perspective didn't have a lot to show us this time 'round. I'll see you all on Tuesday!


	6. Kono 2

Thirsty. So thirsty. Want water.

Everything is dry. Pain is everything. Pain is dry.

Dry. Thirsty.

Hate. Can't think. Need water.

Hate. Get water. Hate.

Hate.

Wo Fat.

Punch to the gut. Pain. Pain. Need water.

Five-0. Hate.

Yakuza. Delano. Sang Min.

Cool. Wet. Cool and wet. Water. All mine.

Punch to the gut. Retch. Retch.

Pain is everything.

* * *

Kono's tires screeched to a halt as they arrived at the school. Anxious parents, antsy reporters, and annoyed cops were spread throughout the area. A group of kids was sobbing to one side, presumably made up of kids whose parents hadn't yet arrived.

Danny craned his neck as they got out of the car, but Kono knew it was a lost cause. Grace was not in that group of children. Grace was still inside.

Together, they pushed their way through the mob toward the yellow tape. Kono ducked under it without needing to flash her badge, but Danny was stopped by a nearby uniform. "You can't go in there."

"I'm a cop, and my kid is in there," Danny hissed.

"You were on Five-0, right?" The uniform laughed. "Then you went back to Jersey. You're waiting here."

"Danny," Kono said as her friend began to puff up in anger, "you aren't armed. You don't have a badge here. Let us take care of it. We'll get Grace back, I promise."

He started to argue, but she smiled reassuringly at him and left to move closer to the school. Chin and a SWAT member were standing just behind the barricades, both wearing serious expressions. When she announced herself, they turned to her with even graver looks. "Meet Brad Washington, Kono. We were just talking about you," Chin said.

"Oh yeah? You gonna let me take a shot at this guy?" Kono grinned. "I'm up for it."

"Not exactly," said Washington. He raked his eyes up and down her body, examining her. "How would you feel about going in alone and unarmed?"

"It's not open for discussion!" growled Chin. "She's not doing it."

"He won't work with anyone else. Says they get each other. With that many hostages…" Washington looked down. "And you know better than I do what he was talking about with the wire."

Chin slammed his hand on the barricade. "No! There has to be some other way."

"Care to include me in this discussion of what I can and can't do, cuz?" she asked. She already knew his answer but continued speaking over his reply. "Chin, Grace is in there. I promised Danny we'd get her out, and if that means going in there then I'm all for it." She pulled off her gun and shoved it into her cousin's hands. "Hang on to this for me, yeah?"

Washington shoved a first aid kit and a walkie-talkie into her hands over Chin's protests. "They're in the third room on the right when you walk in. Be careful. I'd give you more of a briefing, but he said he'd start shooting kids if you weren't in there in fifteen minutes. We're at fourteen now."

"Please, Kono, don't do this! Not for him!" Chin grabbed her arm, and she turned to glare at him. Instead of the usual concern and unease, his face showed nothing but sheer panic. "We have an ID on the gunman."

"Great. You gonna tell me—"

"Sang Min."

Kono stared at him in uncomprehending horror. "Wait. Sang Min? _That_ Sang Min?"

"Exactly." Chin looked down. "He called to specifically request you. Kono, if you go in there you're as good as dead. I can't let that happen again."

She swallowed deeply, but attempted to cover her suddenly squeamish stomach with a smile. "I was fine last time we were one-on-one, wasn't I?"

Before Chin could stop her again, she had hopped the barrier and started toward the school. Her feet grew heavier with each step, her throat grew tighter with each breath. Her shoulder and breast ached.

She had not come unscathed from her last confrontation with Sang Min. Nor had Adam. Adam. Poor Adam.

Her heart slowed as she recalled what she could. A kiss, a laugh, pain blooming in her torso. Chin's voice. Beeping. Lots of pain.

Before she knew it, she was inside and alone. Her footsteps echoed in the hallway, and she counted doors. One. Two. There they were.

There he was. Sang Min.

Most of the children were crying when she looked inside. Not Grace. Grace was glaring at the corner Kono couldn't see, and her expression was so Danny that Kono nearly laughed. A woman was sprawled on the floor, blood pouring from a wound to her shoulder.

Kono took another deep breath and knocked.

"Is it her?" asked a familiar voice. Grace glanced briefly at the door, nodded, and turned her glare back to Sang Min. "Come in!"

Kono was barely inside the room before Sang Min had his gun cocked. "It's so nice to see you again, Officer Kalakaua," he said smarmily. "I only wish we had more time."

"Shut up. I'm here, now let the kids go." She knelt next to the bleeding woman, who stirred slightly at her touch. "She needs help, Sang Min. Let her go. Let all of them go."

"Oh, you think—you think I want you?" Sang Min laughed. She finally turned to look at him, and she saw that his face had not changed in the slightest in over a year. "That is funny. No, I want that," he pointed at the walkie-talkie she still clutched in her hand, "and that." He moved his gun from Kono to Grace, whose expression had not wavered save for the tears in her eyes.

"Absolutely not!" Kono growled. "I am a lot more valuable than a kid, Sang Min. Let her go."

"But you aren't Danny Williams's daughter, are you? I'm under strict orders. She's the only hostage I need. I just wanted to see your smiling face again, now I'm calling the shots. We have some unfinished business, true, but I think that can wait."

One of the kids moved closer to Kono, but she hardly spared a glance in his direction. "That's not going to happen UGH!" The boy had sobbed and stuck a stun gun up her shirt to shock her. She fell to the ground next to the shot woman, her vision gray and blurry.

As she lost consciousness, she heard the other kids screaming. Grace's voice was intermingled this time, louder than any of the others.

She took one more deep breath and her vision darkened completely.

* * *

A/N: And we're back, a total of forty minutes before my deadline for posting this chapter! Work and life got a little bit hairy during the last few days, so I fell behind on a lot of stuff and had to catch up on it. But we're back and ready for action.

I know a lot of you are impatient to find out where the heck Steve is, but all I can/will tell you at this point is that we'll know more about a lot of things within a couple weeks. Secrets will come unveiled, new ones will replace them, all the earmarks of a season run. Sorry, but you won't be getting any spoilers outta me. :)

By the way, I don't know if my last update actually made it into the alert system. The system went a bit hinky on Saturday, and I know I missed some updates on stories I'm following. You may find that reading "Danny 2" will explain some of what's going on here. Just in case you didn't already do it.

Mahalo, my friends, for your continued support.


	7. Chin Ho 2

Pain was constant.

Constant. Constantly different. Constantly present.

Shoulders ached. Heart pounded. Face burned. Legs screamed.

Brush of cool steel. White-hot pain flared.

No questions. No questions.

Why God please why

Fun.

White-hot flare. Flare. Flare. Pain everywhere.

Pain was everything.

* * *

Chin Ho hadn't moved since Kono had left his side. A flurry of activity surrounded him: Washington and his crew went over additional entrances to the school, creating a back-up plan that they and everyone else knew should have been completed before sending anyone inside; reporters, parents, and other bystanders argued with the officers at the civilian barricade and tried to force their way in; news copters buzzed overhead, their loud chirring only adding to the stress below. But Chin remained focused solely on the doors that had swung shut behind his cousin minutes before.

"Hey kid," said a soft voice to his left. Chin didn't have to look to know that Duke had joined him at the edge of the barricade. "How are you holding up?"

"She should be in there by now," Chin muttered, ignoring Duke's question. "Why hasn't he contacted us yet?"

"He's unpredictable," Duke commented. "He'll talk when he wants to and no sooner than that."

Duke was right, but Chin also knew that Sang Min had a minor obsession with his cousin. His request for supplies at the hands of Kono was more than likely nothing more than a ploy to get his hands on her, and Chin knew it. From the look on her face as she hopped the barrier, Kono knew it too.

"I've got movement!" shouted an officer to their right. Chin and Duke and every other officer drew their weapons and aimed at the school entrance, only to drop them when they realized the arrivals were all kids. Four of the bigger ones were half-carrying limp bodies, and Chin's blood ran cold when he recognized the hair of the smaller body.

"Kono!" He rushed forward to his cousin's side. Her head lolled towards him as he took her hand, and he was forcefully reminded of the aftermath of her last encounter with Sang Min. The only difference now was the lack of blood. "What happened?"

One of the boys carrying her sniffled. Other officers appeared beside him to escort the kids to safety and carry the other adult to a waiting ambulance. "He gave me a stun gun and showed me how to use it, and told me if I didn't use it on the first cop I saw then he would shoot Grace. Then he shot Miss Marty. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"It's alright," Kono mumbled as the kid was pulled away by a uniform. Chin tried to hold her down, but she brushed his hand off and sat up. "Chin, we need to get Danny in here. That bastard's holding Grace."

"Ten kids in that room and a wounded adult, and he chooses Danny's daughter to keep?" Chin shook his head. "No way that's a coincidence."

"It isn't. He told me he was following orders."

Sang Ming was working for someone. He wasn't just doing this to get Kono. As horrified as Chin was by Grace's captivity, he couldn't help but feel slightly relieved.

"Like hell I'm not! Where's my daughter?!" Chin looked around to see Danny struggling with one of Duke's men at the barrier. "Gracie?! Grace!"

"We need to go to him," Kono said weakly. She tried to stand, but had to fall against her cousin when her legs gave out. Chin helped her walk over to their former teammate, who was still trying to fight his way past the barrier. "Danny, I'm so sorry."

"You said you'd get her back!" he snarled, turning his aggression on her. "You said you'd take care of her, and you left her in there for dead!"

"We'll get her out, Danny," Chin said. "It'll take some time, but we're gonna bring Grace back. I swear."

"How can you make that promise?!" his friend howled. "Especially after the last time somebody made it!"

_We're gonna bring Steve home._

Chin felt like the world was tilting out from under him at that moment. The panic on Danny's face was exactly the expression he had worn on the trip to Korea. They had all lost a friend that day. Danny was in danger of losing his child.

"Danno?" Grace's soft voice startled everyone. Chin grabbed at his walkie-talkie, but Danny snatched it from his hands with a cry.

"Monkey! Danno's here, Danno's here."

"Good, 'cause I would hate to have to wait on you." Sang Min's oily voice drifted through the speaker. Chin grit his teeth at the sound. "I didn't have to, but I wanted to watch you suffer. I wanted to see you realize what it's like to watch your kid taken away from you and not be able to do a thing about it."

Danny tried to speak, but Sang Min's admission seemed to have stripped his vocal chords of all functionality. Chin took the radio back. "What do you want?"

"Safe passage to the docks and outside of Hawaiian waters for me and the girl. I know some people who she gonna make real happy."

"My dad's gonna kill—ah!" A strange cracking noise and Grace's cry made everyone cry out. "He-he's gonna kill you," she continued, her voice tight with pain.

"You try anything, Williams, and your girl is dead."

"Guh!" Danny choked. Chin moved out of his friend's reach and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"You have to give us something, Sang Min. We can't just give her up like that. We won't."

"You don't, she dies. I ain't afraid to do that. One bullet, that's all it takes." The clacking of the gun's safety spurred Chin into action.

"Don't hurt her. I'll drive you myself." Danny and Kono both protested, but he continued speaking. "Bring Grace out here right now, and we'll talk about this face to face."

"You think I'm stupid, cop? I come out there, I get a bullet to the head. No, I want you to pull that car of yours up to the doors. Me and the girl, we'll get in and get down so we don't get shot. You have two minutes."

"Wait, Dan—" Grace's voice was cut off with a sickening crackle of static, and Chin felt tears form in his eyes. Danny was breaking down even further behind him, but he didn't have time to comfort him.

"I've got no choice. Duke, get anyone available on the nearest set of docks," he ordered. "We'll have to stop him there."

"Chin, let me get my rifle," Kono pled, sidling up beside him as Duke nodded and began barking orders into a radio. "If you stall long enough, I can get an eye on him and snag him from a distance."

"Too dangerous," he countered as they moved closer to his car. He wished it wasn't. How he wished he could send one of the best snipers he had ever seen to the nearest rooftop and that she would hit Sang Min squarely between the eyes and end this nightmare forever. But it was, and if something went wrong, his soul would be irredeemable.

"Dangerous?! Cuz, I'd be on the roof over there!" she shouted, waving her arm across the street. "What the hell is he gonna do to me, glare in my general direction?!"

"Not for you. Grace, on the other hand, would be in danger of being shot by a stray bullet." He stared pointedly at his cousin's hands, which still shook like palm fronds. "You're still feeling the effects of that stun gun."

"I'll be fine!" she protested, but he shook his head.

"It's a risk that I'm not willing to take. Duke, keep her here." He turned from her furious expression and got into his car, wiped his eyes, and maneuvered around the barrier towards the front door. He didn't stop until his car was completely blocking the doorway, knowing that Sang Min wouldn't come out unless he felt absolutely safe.

Grace was barely visible in the shadows of the school's atrium. Only her mussy hair and one bony hand on her shoulder suggested that she was a hostage; her expression was stalwartly furious, her stance as strong as any officer's. She was every bit as brave as her father.

As their eyes met, Chin knew that being the courier for Grace and her captor would be among the hardest things he had ever done. He steeled himself for this inevitability as his friend's daughter was shoved forward, and sent every ounce of hatred he could muster towards Sang Min as the sallow face came into view.

He imagined, if he only concentrated hard enough, that he could make the monster's head blow up with the sheer loathing he felt for him. That he could shape his negative feelings into a bullet and use his gaze as a gun. That the bullet would blow Sang Min's brains across the floor. That he would never again hurt Kono or Gracie or anyone else in the world of the living.

Chin knew that was impossible.

And yet Sang Min's head exploded less than a second after he came into sight.

* * *

A/N: Aloha! I don't have a whole lot to say today, other than I'm sorry for not getting around to replying to your review this time 'round. It's been hectic on my end, to put it mildly. I do read all of them, and I listen (whether it seems like it or not). And I know some of you are confused, and I understand that. In fact, I'm purposefully taking this story in ten different directions at once, but they'll all lead to the same place eventually. I hope you stick around to see that place.

See you Saturday!


	8. Danny 3

His mind is clear.

For the first time in memory, his mind is clear.

No one has come to drug him. Beat him. Shock him.

Torture him.

The room is black. He still hurts. Badly.

That's okay.

If his mind works, he can deal with the pain.

Footsteps echo toward him. He stands as quietly as he can.

This is his chance.

* * *

Danny sat in Grace's hospital room, staring at the lone bubble that had formed at the top of his coffee and contemplating his life.

Not that there was a whole lot to contemplate these days.

He was not a man of many regrets. He didn't regret not going to his senior prom. He didn't regret epically losing with his fantasy league three years ago. He didn't regret having a daughter.

Three things caused that feeling in Danny Williams, and three things alone.

Divorcing Rachel. Letting Steve go to North Korea. Leaving Grace behind.

The first had not been his fault, but he couldn't help but blame himself for his wife leaving him for StepStan. The second was more of a gray area, because even though Danny knew that he didn't possess the ability to stop Steve from leaving he still felt that he should have at least tried.

There was no getting around the fact that the third action was entirely his fault.

Before Steve had usurped Danny into his task force, the only thing he liked about Hawaii was his daughter. But with what would become Five-0, Danny found friends. He found a place where his haole looks and methods weren't the constant subjects of ridicule. He found ohana.

Steve's abduction was hard on all of them, but it was different for Danny. Steven McGarrett had been the first adult on the entire island to treat Danny like he was more than just a waste of space. They had transformed from squabbling partners to brothers somewhere along the way, and without him Danny had a gaping hole in his side.

Even if he had had another kid on the way, Danny doubted that Steve could be replaced as easily as his last partner.

He couldn't escape the memories of his closest friend while on the island. The shrimp truck, the beach, even the driver's seat of his own car seemed to hold the very essence of the SuperSEAL, and nothing Danny did helped him escape from them.

When his sister called him about an opening in his old department in New Jersey, Danny had only thought for two minutes before applying. Selfishly, horribly, he hadn't given a moment's thoughts to his daughter's feelings about the suddenly long-distance relationship.

Instead of crying or pleading, Grace had taken the news with the poise of someone thrice her age. There were no tears in her eyes as she offered to go along to help him "settle in".

Until he saw Grace's face in the aftermath of the shooting, he didn't realize that any damage had been done.

Grace was sleeping now, passed out from a combination of pain killers and an adrenaline crash. The ER doctor wanted to watch the young girl overnight for signs of shock, but so far everything seemed to be fine save her broken arm. On the outside.

Danny's heart had broken when he saw Grace's defiant expression. She had been knocked forward by Sang Min's flailing body, but had turned to watch the remnants of the man's head slide down the door of her school. Her face was cold, her eyes burned fiercely. No twelve-year-old should be capable of that look, but his daughter was.

It was his fault. If he hadn't left her, if he hadn't abandoned her in this pineapple-infested hellhole, she wouldn't know what loathing was. What hatred was.

He knew that she probably harbored the same feelings for him, under the surface, and how could he blame her? He chose to move halfway around the world, back to New Jersey where he could eat proper pizza and didn't have to listen to the ocean if he took two steps outside and could pretend that his little girl was doing just fine without him and didn't have to be reminded of Steven Freaking McGarrett every time he saw a large truck or cargo pants. Danny's hand trembled so much that his coffee's lone bubble burst into cool droplets.

His life had lost all meaning.

He chose to abandon Grace, and she had lost her innocence because of it.

And for that, he would never forgive himself.

"Hey, brah." Kono poked her head into the room with an exhausted smile. "How's she doing?"

"Fine. I think she'll be discharged in the morning, and then we can work on trying to pretend this didn't happen." Danny swilled his coffee around, waiting for Kono to come in or leave. She did neither.

"That's great. Look, we need to talk."

"Later. I'm not leaving Grace. I promised her I wouldn't leave her alone." To Danny's annoyance, an officer with a boyish face stepped around Kono and took up a position right next to the door. "A cousin?"

"Yeah. Matty's going to keep an eye on Grace, but this really can't wait." Danny recognized Kono's tone and grudgingly stood up, tossing his cup into a nearby can and fixing a stern glare on the young cop.

"She's scared right now, so don't try to approach her. Just come and get me if she wakes up."

"Yes sir." Danny held his gaze for a few seconds longer than was polite before going into the hallway with Kono.

Whatever she wanted to talk about, it was serious. She looked as grave as she had at the school, if not more so. She led him to an office-like room two doors down from Grace's room, where Danny was unsurprised to find Chin waiting. The older man was standing at a window with his hands folded, but he seemed to read Danny's mind. "One of Malia's friends offered her office for a while. I knew you wouldn't want to be far from Grace."

"Thanks, man. I appreciate that."

Chin didn't respond for a while, and the air seemed to thicken around Danny. He looked to Kono, but she refused to look anywhere but the floor directly in front of her.

"I'm glad you appreciate it." When Chin finally turned, his face seemed like stone. His eyes were dark as the ocean at night. No light shone in them. "But I don't appreciate being lied to."

* * *

A/N: Welcome to the week of actually figuring out what the hey's going on with these plots! These won't be very action-filled sequences, but they will give us a bit more insight into what happened to our beloved Five-0. And yes, I do mean all of them...

Mahalo for the support! It means the world to me, all of it!


	9. Kono 3

When he opens his eyes, he's on a plane. A tiny plane. Alone save for the pilots.

His escape is hindered by the chains around his chest, arms, and legs that attach him to the chair. His fingers respond to his mind, but nothing else seems to. Even his mouth is immobilized by a thick gag.

He's left with only his own somewhat blurred memories for company. A glance at his arms makes him wince; they're covered with burns, bruises, and other marks that he can't quite feel. The idea that he might be used to the pain scares him.

_Shelburne find Shelburne kill him find him kill him_

He doesn't even know who Shelburne is. Then again, he doesn't know who anyone is anymore. His captors, his friends, his family…

Himself.

He only knows one thing for sure.

When he lands, he has to find Shelburne.

* * *

"I haven't lied to you," said Danny. Chin snorted and rolled his eyes, and Kono shrank away. "Seriously, what are you talking about?"

"You didn't bother to tell me that you had a lead on Wo Fat or McGarrett, whichever the case may be, and in my book omitting something like that is as good as lying."

"Wait a minute, cousin," Kono started, but Chin held up a hand to silence her and continued his rant.

"I understand that you want revenge, Williams, but dragging Kono into it is unacceptable! You got her stabbed, and don't even try and tell me that you don't know what I'm talking about because I _know_ that hand wasn't cut on glass!" Danny's eyes widened, and Chin mistook his expression for guilt. "Kono wouldn't have started an investigation all alone, and if she didn't tell me she went to you. Did you honestly think you could hide this from me for long?"

"I called in the break-in," Danny said slowly. "I wanted to come up with a plan with both of you, but Kono…"

"I convinced him that we shouldn't involve you," she finished for her friend. Chin turned to her, his eyes flashing dangerously. "I knew you wouldn't agree."

"Of course I don't agree!" he snarled. "I ordered you not to go anywhere near this, and you respond by starting an investigation, confronting suspects, and who the hell knows what else behind my back!"

"First of all, Chin, you don't get to order me around," Danny admonished. "I'm a free agent."

"And you have no jurisdiction. I should be arresting you for breaking and entering if you entered a crime scene." Chin wasn't backing down at all, and Kono winced at Danny's expression. "Trespassing, obstructing justice…I can come up with an entire litany of charges if you don't square this away with me."

"What crime scene? I didn't break into the house, I used the key Steve left me before he went to Korea! I had every right to be in there. And I don't know what you're talking about with confronting suspects, because I haven't had time to find anyone to confront about this!"

"Stop lying to me!" Chin suddenly grabbed Kono's hand and waved it at Danny, making her cry out. "I know your investigation got my cousin stabbed, and if there was a knife involved she was damn lucky that her hand is the only thing that was injured."

"Let me break this down for you: I called in a B&E on the house, hoping you and Kono would respond. Kono showed up, told me not to involve you or HPD, and agreed to meet me over lunch to discuss our options. She left, I went to the shrimp truck, and we didn't see each other again until just after I found out about Grace." Danny paused for a moment. "I was skeptical about not letting you in the loop, but I think your cousin might have been right about you."

Kono jerked her hand away from her cousin as he practically growled aloud. "Danny's not lying, Chin. What he just told you was the entire truth."

"Then how do you explain that?" he spat, gesturing at her hand.

"I have my own knife, you know," she whispered. Chin's eyes widened, as did Danny's; both of them stared at her. "I knew you weren't going to let me go for long, so I sliced myself open before I got out of my car at the precinct. I needed to do this," she said with more strength as Chin tried to interrupt. "I needed to work this case without you interfering."

"You lied to me."

"This isn't about you, Chin!" she shouted. "This is about me, this is about Steve! Or have you forgotten everything he did for us?!"

"Of course I haven't," he started.

"Then why are you so against trying to find him? Chin, if Wo Fat is back on this island—"

"I'm just trying to protect you." Her cousin's eyes softened suddenly, but the expression only made her angrier.

"I don't need your protection! I'm an adult, I'm a cop, and I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself!"

"Like you were the last time we dealt with Sang Min, right?"

She snapped. "That's none of your business! It's over, and it never had anything to do with you in the first place!"

"He almost killed you. No, let me rephrase that: he shot you twice, Kono. Your heart stopped beating three times that night. In what world is that not my business?"

"I don't need this," she said thickly. She was through the office door before her cousin or friend could stop her.

Chin's words had hit home, however, and when combined with the earlier events of the day they took Kono's unwilling mind to memories she would sooner forget.

_Adam, why did you ask me out here instead of to your house?_

_You told me to meet you here because of an emergency._

_No, I got a text from…get down, now!_

_Bang. Bang. Bang._

_Bang._

_You should have stayed out of the game, cop._

_Sang Min? Why are you—_

_Bang._

She wrenched herself from the memories as she collapsed onto the steps. Her feet had taken her to the hospital's stairwell, probably with the intent of fleeing the hospital altogether.

But she couldn't go. She couldn't run anymore.

She had been running for the past year. Running from her memories, running from her angry family, running from her pain…she couldn't keep going.

Chin was right to be angry. She knew he wanted to protect her. She knew she wasn't making it easy.

The last person who tried to protect her was still down. Adam would probably never wake again.

Kono had already lost two of the people she loved.

She couldn't lose Chin Ho, too.

* * *

A/N: Hope this answers some questions about Kono's recent past. Speaking of...that finale, wow.

See you Thursday. Mahalo.


	10. Chin Ho 3

A/N: Please read the real author's note at the end of the chapter. It contains important information. Thanks.

* * *

He stares at the old house, not understanding quite why he walked out here or why he can't stop looking at it. It's not as fancy or secluded as other houses on this island must be, but something about it seems familiar.

A silver car pulls up, and he's glad that he's hidden. But when the car stops, he feels a pull in his gut, a pull that urges him to leave his cover and approach the occupant. The driver gets out, and his mind floods with…something.

Pineapple hellhole New Jersey haole let me drive

Book 'em -?

By the time he recovers, the short blond man is inside the house. He makes to follow him, but his phone rings first. Like always, he has to wait for the voicemail to register.

You will receive a message soon. You will come to the enclosed address. You will come inside. You will find information on Shelburne. You will not ignore this message. Pop. Click.

And he snaps his phone shut and waits for a text to arrive. There is movement near one upstairs window, and it draws his attention. The blond man looks outside for a moment, and his face is red and swollen. Tearstained. Eventually the man moves away from the window.

He gets a text message as a second car pulls into view. This one is red, and shiny. It also has a pull, but he ignores it and turns away.

He has to go.

* * *

Chin Ho wiped a hand over his face as Danny finished explaining what had happened at the house. "And all this because she doesn't trust me."

"Yeah, speaking of not trusting people," Danny said bitterly, "I'm feeling a little left out of the loop here. Is there some reason why _you_ don't trust _her_?"

"I trust Kono with everything I have," Chin said quickly. "I don't always trust her judgment is all." Danny raised his eyebrows. "Look, it's a long story."

"Then you better have a long explanation, Kelly," Danny replied.

He sighed and nodded. "I know. It goes back maybe…a year and a half ago. There was this prison riot, and some of the inmates actually escaped in the chaos. We rounded up most of them pretty fast, but Sang Min stayed under our radar."

Kono approached him after work months later, telling him that Sang Min was supposedly about to carry out hits on people tied to the Yakuza. Instead of doing something about the rumors, he grilled her for information on her Yakuza informant. How she met them. Who they were. Why they told her this. Instead of laughing off his interrogation as over-protection, she flew into a rage.

Her hair spun as she paced around his desk, ranting about how he didn't trust her. Her face flushed with anger when he told her that she needed to calm down. She cancelled their dinner plans with Malia on the spot and stormed away from him, and he hadn't even bothered to call after her.

"Seems par for the course," Danny said, interrupting his train of thought. Chin shook his head and smiled in spite of himself.

"Not since you left, brah. She and I had dinner together three times a week, twice alone and once with Malia, every single week. Her reaction was drastic." He blew out another sigh. "That night, I decided to take a drive down the coast to clear my mind, and a radio call came in about gunshots on some docks. I wasn't far, so I responded and got there as fast as I could. When I got there, I found Kono and Adam Noshimori laying in a pool of blood. He was practically on top of her."

He could still see his panic-stricken face, reflected in the grisly mirror on the concrete. The blood mixed with Kono's hair, making it spread out angelically. She was so pale. So still. So eerily silent.

He called for some buses and felt for pulses. Adam's was weak but steady, but Kono's wasn't present at all. He stopped the bleeding as best he could and began chest compressions immediately, and after a minute or so she let out a wheezing breath and stirred. Her mouth opened, but whatever she was trying to say was lost in a dribble of yet more blood.

Her heart stopped again before help came. He restarted compressions, and kept going after more cops arrived. After the buses arrived. After they screeched to a halt at Tripler. The whole way into emergency surgery, where he was finally and forcefully relieved of his duties by a nurse.

"She lost a lot of blood, and one of the bullets nearly hit her heart, but the surgeon managed to patch her back up enough that she pulled through. Adam was easier to patch up, or so they thought, but it quickly became apparent that he was comatose. And he has been ever since. For a while, we thought Kono might be as well." A single tear rolled down his cheek as he remember the hours he spent at her bedside, holding her hand in his and praying to whoever would listen that she would survive. "When she finally woke up a week later, her parents were in the room. She only asked them why I hadn't listened to her before passing out again, but I got the message loud and clear from her mother."

Danny had leaned forward a little more with each second of Chin's tale, and the older man vaguely wondered if he would fall off his chair soon. It was easier to focus on that idea than the memory of his favorite cousin's horror upon hearing of Adam's condition. Of her iciness after his apology. Of her months of pain and fury. Of the pain and fury that stayed just under the surface even now. Another tear rolled down his cheek. "So she blames you, then?"

"I think so. She won't even tell me for sure, Danny, but I know she blames me for trying to keep her safe now." He shook his head. "If I try to protect her I'm overbearing, but if I don't I don't care about her. I just…"

Perhaps Danny recognized that his friend was in crisis, because he quickly changed the subject. "Okay, but that doesn't explain why she was with Adam at all. I'm presuming Sang Min shot them, right? That's why you brought him up again?"

"That's correct." Chin sighed again. "Kono and Adam are…were…they dated. I believe they met shortly before the Korea debacle."

"Kono just blithely decided to date one of the Yakuza heads?" Danny laughed hollowly. "Of course she did. Of course she did."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Chin was attempting to control his emotions, and Danny's expressions were unusually masked. Finally, the New Jersey-native breathed out a sigh of his own. "One more and I'm done for the night."

"Alright."

"Why won't you help us track down Wo Fat?"

This was the easiest question Chin had to answer all night. It was also the hardest. "I don't…"

"C'mon, Chin, just…look, we owe this to Steve. If you're worried about getting Kono hurt, come along for the ride and watch her or something." Danny's eyes were wild behind his stoic mask. "I need help."

"I can't. Nor can Kono."

"Why?!" Danny leaped to his feet, and Chin joined him.

"Because this is a helluva lot bigger than a potential gunshot wound, Danny!" He started to slam his fist into the chair arm, but since he was standing his arm just swung through the air. "I won't have her labeled a traitor."

* * *

A/N: Aloha! That opening scene was all sorts of fun to write. Seeing Danny, not remembering who he is...not even knowing why he's at the house. Poor Steve.

I'm sure you're wondering why the title of the story has changed, not to mention the cover. I took some time last night to lay out the plans that have been floating around my head for this story, and it became apparent that there were really three separate phases to the story as it is now. That's right: I'm talking sequels. This one is named for the One Republic song "Come Home", and the sequel is named for Skylar Grey's "Coming Home, Pt. II", which is one of the inspirations for this story in general. I'm going to withhold the name for the third book in the series for now, but it follows the theme.

I'm super excited to release this bit of news. Speaking of exciting news...since I have a hectic schedule ahead of me next week, I'm going to be posting three chapters on Saturday! Woohoo! I don't want to forget to post something next week, and it'll let me have a little more time to write, so it's good all around.

I think that's all I have to say. Mahalo, my friends!


	11. Danny 4

A/N: Time to bring back some old characters during this postapalooza!

* * *

His progress is halted by a woman.

She is utterly unaware of his presence, wrapped up in some newscast that she's watching with horrified fascination, but for a moment she is his entire world.

Her hair is a dark waterfall, her skin especially pale against it. Whatever event has her attention has caused tears to form in her dark eyes, bringing his attention directly to them.

They're beautiful.

Like the blond man, this woman stirs something in the recesses of his mind, but the feelings are somehow even stronger.

Favor of course you do dinner breakfast bed

Hey... ... ... ...I need a favor

A gasp startles him from his reverie, and he shakes himself of the sensation and moves.

He just hopes nobody around his target rooftop is suspicious of briefcases.

* * *

Danny Williams was the type of man who preferred to have at least eight hours of sleep a night. He could get by on seven and mostly function on six, but when it came to less time than that he became…testy.

And Danny had not gotten a single wink of sleep the previous night.

"I swear, if this is that Summer Thompson woman again I'm buying a gun for the sole purpose of putting a bullet through her forehead," he grumbled as he made his way to his room's door. "What?"

"Ken Suichi from Action Five, Mr. Williams," called a man from the other side of the door. "We'd love an interview with you and your dau-"

"We're not interested!" he shouted. "If you come back here, I'm calling the police and having you arrested for harassment."

A loud huff preceded three sets of feet padding away from the door, and he sighed in mixed anger and relief. He couldn't grant them an interview with Grace even if he wanted to. She wasn't with him in the hotel room.

His daughter had been reluctant to go back to the hotel upon her discharge. Her doctor suggested that she wanted somewhere with more stability, more permanency after the previous day's trauma, and this revelation coupled with Grace's incessant questioning of Kono's wellbeing after her meeting with the stun gun prompted Danny to send his daughter home with his old teammate. He had stayed with her for a while, but eventually she had screamed at him to "stop hovering and leave her alone!".

So he had.

The vultures that masqueraded as newscasters had somehow discovered where he was staying, unfortunately, and he was regaled with a flurry of questions upon his arrival at the hotel. They must have assumed that his daughter was holed away within the room, because the first reporter had broken through security and approached his room a mere five minutes after he had arrived. The onslaught had been relentlessly steady since then.

Danny hadn't even made it back to the couch when the next knock came at the door. He turned on his heel, stormed to the door, shouting "I thought I said that we didn't want to talk!" He flung the door open, only to be met with someone who was very much not a reporter.

Catherine Rollins raised an eyebrow at his flustered expression. "Hello to you too, Danny."

"Catherine? What are you doing…"

"I saw the coverage yesterday," she said, sliding past him into the room without waiting for an invitation. She was so much like Steve. "How's your daughter?"

"She's okay," he said slowly. Something was wrong. He thought that Catherine was acting too casual, but he couldn't say why he thought that. "Shouldn't you be, like, in the middle of the Persian Gulf right now or something?"

"Just got back on Saturday, actually. I've had the last few days off, but I get back to work at Pearl tomorrow morning." Danny nodded, unsure of exactly why she was visiting his hotel room on her last day off.

He figured it out pretty quickly when her fist slammed into the side of his face.

"What was that for?!" he wheezed, holding his cheek and trying to regain control of his suddenly spotty vision. When he could see again, he was met with the sight of a handgun pointed at his forehead. "Whoa whoa whoa, easy there!"

"Easy?!" she snarled. "It would have been _easy_ for you to tell me when my boyfriend was taken captive by one of the most notorious criminals of the century!"

"Listen, Catherine," he started, but she continued to rant right over him.

"I'm Naval Intelligence, you dimwit!" she shouted. "I have connections that you and your stupid little government taskforce friends can't even dream of! I could have done something! But instead, you and your buddies decide you don't need any Naval support and go gallivanting off to North Korea by yourselves and get him taken for good! And you STILL didn't tell me!"

"Just put the gun down and we'll talk about this," he said slowly. Catherine didn't have the crazed look that meant she had lost most of her mental facilities, meaning she knew exactly what she was doing.

That was more terrifying to him than anything else in that moment.

"Why should I put it down, Danny? You got Steve killed, didn't you? Why shouldn't I kill you, too, huh? Give me a reason!"

"Because Steve wouldn't want you too." He knew he had made a bad decision as soon as the words left his mouth. Catherine narrowed her eyes and cocked the gun. "Please, there's a lot you don't understand. You can kill me later."

"Too late, Danny," she whispered. He closed his eyes. Every sound, every smell seemed so real to him. It was all in slow motion. He could smell the ocean breeze drifting into the room through the badly sealed balcony door. Could hear his murderer's heavy breathing. Could hear the click of the trigger.

He waited for the bullet to pierce his brain.

And waited.

Eventually he opened one eye. Catherine was holding the gun as if she had just shot it, his head still squarely in her sights, but though her finger was on the trigger nothing had happened. "Seriously? You threatened me with an unloaded gun?"

"I guess I wanted to scare you a bit," she whispered. Her voice was full of pain instead of anger; she had apparently exhausted her rage. "You're right, anyhow. Steve wouldn't want me to hurt you, even if you did get him killed." Her eyes were suddenly full of tears. "You were his best friend," she mumbled as she began to cry in earnest. "He loved you."

Danny stood up, took the gun from her hands, and led her to the couch to sit, feeling rather weird for treating the Naval Lieutenant like a child. They sat in silence for a few minutes, with only the occasional sniffle from her interrupting the quiet. It should have felt awkward, holding his best friend's girlfriend in an otherwise empty hotel room, but something told him that she needed the physical touch of someone else close to Steve to feel even close to okay again.

"Why do you think he's dead?" he asked when she managed to sit up and wipe her eyes. "Did you hear something through the grapevine?"

"He's been taken captive by Wo Fat, Danny," she said. "It's impossible that he's still alive, don't you think?"

"No." Catherine glared at him. "I'm serious, Catherine. We think he was captured so Wo Fat could get information on someone called Shelburne. Steve has no clue who that is, but Wo Fat seemed convinced that he did, and that means that Steve has leverage keeping him alive. As long as Wo Fat believes that he's holding something secret…"

"Steve stays alive." She smiled slightly, but her gaze was still fractured with pain. "Who knows what hell he's been through, though. Two years is a long time in the hands of a madman."

They were silent for another space of time, but the air was less tense. Danny finally coughed to break it up and turned to Catherine. "We tried."

"I beg your pardon?"

"We tried to tell you. Governor Denning deleted our work emails before we could get to them, and none of us had your address anywhere else. We tried radioing the Enterprise, but they said you were unavailable. Joe told us he couldn't get through to you. I even wrote you letters, but something tells me you never received them." Catherine blinked. "Denning wanted to bury this whole thing, and he did a pretty grand job of it."

"I saw Wo Fat." It was Danny's turn to be shocked at this sudden revelation. "He was in Kabul. I was following up on a lead with a couple other NI, and he was just there. We tried to follow him, but the market was crowded and he's slippery. I emailed Steve as soon as we were back on board, but he never answered. And he's never answered me since." She stopped to wipe her eyes. "According to Kono, that was only three days after the botched rescue. Steve was probably right there."

"Kono?"

_Catherine's not available right now, and even if she wasn't…well, let's just say she probably wouldn't be too helpful._

"Yeah. I tracked her down shortly after I got back to the island, like maybe a year ago or so? She just told me upfront that Steve was gone, and I kind of lost it for a while." Catherine shook her head. "I had to be back at work in two hours after I found out, and I just had to bury everything and pretend the man I loved wasn't in mortal peril. I guess that explains what happened earlier."

She stood and crossed to the balcony door. Danny's heart broke for her as she hugged herself and stared out to sea, as if hoping to see Steve walking towards her.

He had been able to run. He hadn't moved on, but he'd had friends who had helped him through the worst of it, even from a distance.

Catherine had been entirely and utterly alone in her pain. She had had no one to turn to, no one to talk to, no one to cry on.

She obviously loved Steve. And that kind of a loss isn't easy to manage.

It was on him to make her load a little more manageable.

"He loves you." She turned, her eyes unreadable. "He never admitted it, I'm not even sure if he knows it himself, but he loves you. I knew it the first time I saw him call you."

"You think so?" she whispered.

Danny nodded, and she grinned through the tears that were running down her face. "He'll come back. He has to."

"Yeah."

They exchanged a long look. And Danny saw in her eyes the thoughts that rolled through his own mind.

Steve might never come back. Steve would probably never come back.

They would be waiting for never.


	12. Kono 4

He places the case on the nearest table upon entering the warehouse.

His current mission is through. It's time to get his information.

Shelburne.

He expects to be given the information upfront. Does not expect the needle in his neck.

When he becomes aware again, he's hanging by his wrists. Something blocks his vision. He wants to see. Can't see.

Saw you watching her.

Why. Why.

Had to. Know her.

No.

Punch to the gut.

Why.

Know her.

Punch to the gut.

Why.

Don't know.

Cold water. Buzzing sound.

Oh god the pain why is this happening

Don't know her.

Don't know her.

Nothing.

* * *

Kono stared at her reflection in silent contemplation.

Her collarbone stuck out more than she liked. Her tank top, once her favorite, now hung loose on her frame. Her shoulder bore a round scar that would never fade. The top of a twin scar was just visible at her neckline.

She had avoided mirrors for months until now. And now she could finally see that she was a shell of the girl who had joined Five-0.

"Auntie Kono?" asked a small voice. She turned to see Grace standing in her doorway. The young girl's hair was frizzier than she had ever seen, and her eyes were puffy and red.

Grace was a wreck.

"What's up?"

"Danno hates me now, doesn't he?" she whispered.

"What? No, of course not," Kono soothed. The sound of Grace screaming at her father echoed in her head. Even after Danny had left, Grace's rant had continued. She had obviously inherited more than angry expressions from her father. "Gracie, your dad could never hate you."

"But it's all my fault!" she squeaked, fresh tears flooding her eyes.

Kono sighed and sat on the bed, patting the space next to her. Grace practically teleported to her side, throwing her good arm around her and falling into an all-out meltdown. "Nothing's your fault, honey. Sang Min is a terrible…was a terrible man, and he did a lot of bad things to a lot of good people. You didn't do anything wrong."

"I don't care about Sang Min!" she wailed. Kono's brow furrowed as Grace attached herself even more securely to her waist. "It's all my fault that Danno even left! It's my fault, and I yelled at him for it this morning and he has to hate me now and he'll go back to New Jersey and I'll never get to see him ever again and _it's all my fault_!"

"Oh, no, honey," Kono started, but Grace either didn't hear her attempts at soothing or didn't care.

"Danno wouldn't have left if I was better, if I hadn't liked StepStan so much and if I hadn't hated his hotels and if I hadn't made Uncle Steve go away and…"

"Whoa, hang on a second!" Kono interjected, making a mental note to ream Danny out for letting his daughter think this sort of thing. "Look at me, Grace. Look." Grace raised bleary eyes to meet Kono's. "First of all, your dad thinks the world of you. He hated leaving you, but he was in a really bad place for a while. You had nothing to do with him moving back to New Jersey."

"Then why did he go?" she sniffled. Kono sighed at the girl's confused gaze.

"He left because he got a job out there, and because he missed your Uncle Steve too much while he was still living here on the island." Grace's expression broke once more, and her tears started again with a vengeance.

"I told you! I knew it was my fault!"

"But it isn't-"

"If I hadn't made that stupid birthday wish, Uncle Steve would still be here and Danno never would have left!" With that exclamation, Grace ran from the bedroom and slammed a door nearby. Kono followed behind to find the bathroom door securely shut; a high-pitched squeal echoed from within.

"Grace," she started.

"Leave me alone!"

She sighed but obeyed her charge's order and returned to her room, where her attention was taken once again by her newly uncovered mirror.

It had happened on accident. Grace had wanted a blanket, and Danny had flown through the house to appease her desire. Kono hadn't realized he had taken the blanket covering her vanity until she had come in to change clothes.

When she had returned from the hospital a year ago, she had finally gotten a good look at herself in her mirror as she struggled to fix her hair.

Her eyes had been dead. And that had terrified her.

Those dead eyes in her otherwise living body had stuck around for the rest of the day. And the next.

And the next.

She had finally panicked. Took a bottle of shampoo to her bathroom medicine cabinet, destroying the haunted reflection before it could drive her completely insane. Her other mirrors she covered in the dark, when they could no longer tease her with a ghost of the girl she was.

Kono hadn't actually recognized herself when she walked into her room that morning. She had her gun pointed at the stranger in wrinkled, sweaty clothes at the same moment the stranger had a gun on her.

She had realized then that she was a stranger. And now, even with Grace's tears staining her purple shirt, she was still a stranger to herself.

But something was different about her now. She was gaunt, yes, and her skin was scarred and her hair sort of limp.

The eyes that watched her watch them were no longer dead.

Sad. Defeated. Lonely. Angry. Scared.

But alive.

And that made her think that the real Kono Kalakaua was still alive behind them.

She was just locked away in memories, like Grace was locked in her bathroom.

She just needed to gain the courage to come back.


	13. Chin Ho 4

He's surrounded by strangers. Can feel them watching him, even though they're shrouded in darkness. They don't speak.

They watch.

This scene is familiar to him. Too familiar.

But it's different now.

Two faces are free from shadow. Closer to him.

A blond man. A pale woman.

I know them.

No. Strangers. Don't know

I know them

NO.

The blond man smirks at him, runs a hand over his hair. The woman grins and winks, grazes her lip with her teeth.

An electrifying pain courses through him, but it's too late.

He knows. He knows he knows them.

He knows them.

* * *

"Hey Fong. Did you get anything off that phone Lukela's men brought down?"

Charlie turned to smile at Chin Ho. "It's been a while! I'm surprised to see you in person. Though I'm surprised to see you and not one of your men."

Chin shrugged and smiled tightly. "I just spoke with the chief. Kono and I are running this show now, given our prior run-ins with Sang Min, and she's a little busy right now."

"Oh." Fong's face fell slightly. "It's been a long time since I've seen her, too. How is she?"

"She's…" The tech seemed to understand Chin's inability to answer, and he sighed. "Anyhow, about that phone."

"Right!" Charlie turned back to his computer screen. "It didn't contain much of interest. Nothing was stored in the phone itself, and the SIM card is practically brand new. Only one number was dialed, and it was to a burn phone."

"Of course it was."

"But luckily, that one phone call gives us a rough location. According to the map, Sang Min made a call from somewhere at these abandoned warehouses." He grabbed a print-out of a set of warehouses and shrugged. "That's about it. Tracking down that burner hasn't worked yet, but I'll let you know if it does. I also have some prints running."

"Alright. Mahalo," Chin said. He turned to leave, but a beeping noise stopped him in his tracks. "Is that more for me?"

"Yeah. Well, kind of." Fong pulled up a search on one of his screens and sighed. "There were at least five distinct fingerprints on that phone that didn't match Sang Min. I've been running them since last night, but the search just came back empty."

"Maybe the phone was stolen?"

"Or borrowed. Or it could just be secondhand. There's really no way to tell at this point, especially with the replaced SIM card." He shrugged. "Like I said, I'll let you know if I get something."

"And I'll get some people and get on those warehouses."

"Hey." Chin Ho looked up to meet Charlie's eyes. They were full of emotion, emotion that Chin knew all too well. "Tell Kono that I miss her, yeah?"

"Will do, brah. Aloha."

He made his way out to his car, pausing to let some of the sun's rays soak into his face. Malia had given him strict orders to soak up more Vitamin D after yesterday's standoff, telling him that it would help with the stress. It certainly warmed his skin, but his insides were still cold with fear, sadness, and just a tinge of bitterness.

When he finally sat in his car, he leaned his head back in contemplation. The fact that Fong hadn't seen Kono was news to him, especially since Kono had claimed to have weekly lunch dates with the man. It wasn't a surprising leap in logic to assume that she was spending the time holding Adam's unconscious hand, but it was a discouraging one. He had rather hoped Kono was starting to recover from her mourning period.

After yesterday, however, he realized that she wasn't even close to recovering. Wasn't even trying to recover.

Could he really blame her?

* * *

He wasn't ready when Catherine answered the door instead of Kono. "Aloha?"

"Hi, Chin!" Catherine smiled brightly. "Danny and I just got here. He and Kono are talking with Grace in the back, but she said to expect you."

"Oh." He stepped inside but immediately turned back to stare at Catherine. "But why are you here?"

Her smile faded. "I saw what happened yesterday, and this morning I tracked Danny down to see how he and Grace were doing and to confront him about your collective lack of effort to contact me."

"Look, about-"

"I know." She shrugged. "Danny already explained it to me. In fact, that's exactly why I'm here now. I want to help."

"Catherine, if you've spoken to Danny then you probably already know about the governor's gag order," he said impatiently. "If Kono or I are caught investigating anything to do with Wo Fat unless he gets thrown into the midst of one of our cases, he's going to take us down for treason. After all, we did go into North Korea on an illegal mission, and we used military resources to boot. He could have prosecuted us already, though the upgrade to treason is a bit much."

"Don't give me that crap," she replied. He narrowed his eyes, but she merely snorted. "You're allowed to dig into Wo Fat as long as you keep it pertinent to your current case, and that's exactly why you went to your boss and begged yourself and Kono off regular duty and onto the Sang Min case."

He froze. How had this woman who he had met only a handful of times seen through his motives? Even Kono had seemed like she bought his scenario of being forced onto the case, and she knew him better than almost anyone.

Malia had talked him into it. On accident, at least; his wife was quite content with him on mostly low-level cases that didn't put him in the path of a bullet on an hourly basis.

But before they had left for work that morning, she had pulled him into her arms and grinned at him, telling him that she was surprised he hadn't run to his boss the moment Sang Min had dropped dead. "The dangerous side of the man I fell in love with, he wouldn't have breathed first," she had chuckled before kissing him and walking to her car.

Her words had stirred up so many emotions in Chin Ho that he hadn't been able to move for a full minute.

She was right. The old Chin Ho Kelly would have been all action, as soon as he had the opportunity.

The old Chin Ho Kelly. The real Chin Ho Kelly.

Until that moment, Chin hadn't realized that he had changed. He wasn't sure when the change had happened. When the governor disbanded the team, when he got married, when Kono had nearly died…but he wasn't the same man.

That man knew when to stand down. He still knew that.

But he had also known when to take a stand. And Chin had forgotten how that worked.

"Sang Min almost killed Kono." Catherine's eyes widened. "She died several times that night, actually. I would have given anything to put a bullet through his head…but someone did that for me."

"When?" she whispered. "She seems okay now."

"A little over a year ago." He narrowed his eyes when Catherine went limp and staggered backwards to lean against Kono's door. "What?"

"That's why…that's why she was so strange," she said faintly. "She was the only one I could find…I didn't know…"

"What are you talking about?"

"I all but attacked her for information on Steve. It had to have been after the shooting, since it was just before I was due to check in for my latest deployment." Catherine wiped her eyes. "She just told me, point blank, that Wo Fat had him. I…I don't really remember what I said. I know that it was terrible, but I'm mostly blank on how I got from her doorstep to Pearl."

He put a hand on her shoulder, and she looked at him with dread-filled eyes. He recognized the expression from the mirror, after any of his too-often fights with his cousin. "It's alright. Besides, you're kind of right about my motives."

"What?"

His expression hardened. "Sang Min was working for someone. And he was killed by someone else. I'd bet anything on this green Earth that Wo Fat was at least one of those parties." Her eyes widened again. "And where Wo Fat is…"

"Information on Steve is."

* * *

A/N: And that's it for the postapalooza! I'll see you all in a week with Danny, and the story should stop being so much about developing backstory and get back in the action from then on.

Aloha, my friends!


	14. Danny 5

He wants to sleep. But his brain won't stop. Eyes won't close.

The bald man is slumped against his chains on the opposite wall. He feels compelled to help, but he doesn't know how.

His cell mate has been with him for a week. He wants to enjoy not being tortured, but every punch, kick, flame to the bald man's body echoes in his own. It is its own form of torture. He doesn't know why. He wants to know. Can't know. Won't know.

A chuckle echoes through the room. "Well, McGarrett, I've sure mucked things up."

He doesn't respond. The man isn't talking to him, after all. But he keeps listening.

"I don't think I'm going to make it out of here, kid. I'm surprised that you're still around, but," he stops to cough. Something red dribbles from his lips. "But I guess I shouldn't be. I just hope you make it back."

Before anything else can be said, four men with guns arrive, unchain his cell mate. Suddenly, he wants to tear free from his own manacles. He wants to fight tooth and nail to reach that bald man.

But he can't. So he watches as the bald man is taken from the room.

There are some shouts moments later.

Bang.

And he feels that, too.

And it hurts differently than the others. More inside.

His cheeks feel wet.

He wakes up.

* * *

Danny sighs when he shuts his door without any of the reporters and photographers getting inside. Grace tears Kono's sweatshirt off her head and throws it on the floor by the couch before sinking into the davenport, staring straight ahead.

"So, Monkey, do you want something to drink?"

"Danno?"

"I'm sorry? Last I checked, Danno's Toenail Juice wasn't on the menu." She didn't react to his bad joke. He couldn't blame her. "Okay, what's up?"

"Why did Auntie Kono yell at you earlier?"

He'd hoped to put off this conversation. "Kono and I had a disagreement, nothing major."

"Don't lie to me, Danno." Grace looked him in the eyes for the first time since screaming at him earlier in the morning, and she looked so like her mother in that moment that he was ready to call his lawyer. "I'm tired of being left out."

"Who's-"

"You, and Auntie Kono and Uncle Chin and who knows who else. I'm not stupid, you know," she said calmly. Her tone frightened him more than her screaming had. "You know something about Sang Min, don't you?"

"Sang Min?" Danny shook his head. "No, I really don't. I don't have the slightest clue about Sang Min."

"But Auntie Kono wanted you to tell me the truth. I'm assuming it's to distract me from Uncle Steve, and that's the angle she tried to use earlier, so what else would it be?"

She really had no idea. Her trust in her father was so complete that she couldn't imagine the sheer extent of his failings as a dad.

He was about to break her heart. And that trust. And her fragile spirit.

He hated himself even more.

"No, Monkey, listen," he started, sliding onto the couch next to her, "Auntie Kono told me about your feelings about Uncle Steve. I just want you to know that you really had nothing to do with his disappearance."

She was silent for a moment, watching him through narrowed eyes. "At my birthday party, the one you were almost late to because of a case…" Grace stopped to take a breath and brace herself. "I made a really mean wish when I blew out the candles."

"What was it?" he asked quietly.

A tear slid down her cheek. "I wished that Uncle Steve would go away for a while, because you were spending more time with him than with me and I hated that."

"Wh-what?" But Grace had started her confession, and she wasn't going to stop to answer her father's startled question.

"I didn't mean it, Danno, I didn't! But a month later, you came to see me and told me that he had to go on a mission and that he didn't get to say goodbye to me and that he would miss me a whole lot, and then you lost your job and you moved back home and neither me nor Uncle Steve got to spend any time with you and it's all my fault!"

She burst into tears and tried to run, but Danny grabbed her arm and pulled her into his chest, hugging her as she sobbed. He hadn't seen or heard his daughter so upset in years. Rachel would have told him if she'd expressed these feelings to her, so it could only be assumed that Grace had been holding them in for the past two years.

And she was wrong, and Kono was right: it was all his fault.

"You're right, Grace. Auntie Kono and Uncle Chin and I, we've been keeping a secret from you." She stopped crying to look up at him in shock. "It doesn't have a whole lot to do with Sang Min, but it might make you mad. You have to promise not to tell anyone this, ever. I could get into a lot of trouble."

She nodded and continued to stare at him, her eyes less shocked and more curious. He took a moment to commit his daughter's face to memory, because he had a feeling that it would be the last time she looked at him with anything but hatred for a long time.

"Do you remember when I told you about the woman who was helping at work, Jenna?" Grace shook her head. "That's fine, she wasn't around a lot. Well, she asked Uncle Steve to go on a…on a mission. She needed help, so he went with her."

"And they're still on the same mission?" Grace asked quietly.

"Not exactly." Danny paused again. It was difficult to find the appropriate words to tell Grace that her hero had been kidnapped and presumably tortured by a madman. "I got a call from Jenna that something went wrong, and so I went after them to try and help. Auntie Kono and Uncle Chin and Lori and a few other people went, too. We found Jenna, but Uncle Steve wasn't there when we got there, and we tried to track him down but…" Lori missed the one shot that would have saved him from years of torture "we didn't make it in time."

"What do you mean?" Grace's eyes filled with tears again. "He's dead!"

"No!" Danny gripped her shoulders slightly. "No, Monkey, he's not dead. We have to believe that. We just aren't sure where he is, that's all."

Grace looked down. "Didn't Jenna tell you when you found her?"

"She wasn't able to." Grace let out a quiet sob, and he knew that she knew exactly what he was saying. Eventually she looked back at him with a furious expression behind her tears, and he headed off her tirade. "I know you're angry and upset as well as sad, Monkey, but you were still very young when this happened and I didn't think you were ready to hear everything."

"So you lied? Why couldn't you have just told me he was missing?" she said venomously. "You've never lied to me before."

"I wanted to, but there was another reason. Our boss ordered us to tell anyone who asked that Uncle Steve was on a top-secret mission. We weren't allowed to tell the truth, or we could get into a lot of trouble."

Grace's fury seemed far from quelled, but before she could snap at him again someone rapped on the door. Danny tried to smile at his daughter as he moved to answer the knock, but it came out a grimace. She glared back before he turned to open the door. Catherine stood with a smile and a bag of food in either hand. "Dinner is served."

"Thanks for this, Catherine." Danny took the food from her and turned to call Grace, but his daughter was already by his side, her expression still lethal. "Grace, uh-"

"Did you know?" she asked loudly. Catherine quickly shut the door behind her and turned back around, her expression falling. "Did Danno tell you?"

"Not until this morning," Catherine said, aptly guessing what Grace was referring to. "I knew part of it from before, but I didn't quite have the whole story until today."

"Why aren't you mad?! They lied!"

Danny squeezed his eyes shut and sighed as Grace flailed her good arm. Catherine sighed, too, but hers was more sad than resigned. "Yes, they did. I didn't hear a single thing about any of it until I cornered Kono and asked her why Steve hadn't contacted me for months. But," she said over another of Grace's exclamations, "they had a good reason for it. They weren't allowed to."

"So? Who cares?!"

"I think you would care if your dad got sent to prison, wouldn't you?" Danny opened his eyes to see that Grace had gone white as the inside of a coconut. "The fact that Kono and your dad have told us about it at all means they're breaking an order, and they could get in a lot of trouble for that. We're two of only about twelve people who know the truth, and we're not supposed to know at all. The fact that we do means your dad and Kono and Chin think we're important enough to Steve and them to know the truth, and we can't be angry at them about that."

Grace stared at her for a moment before the tears returned. "Is that true, Danno?"

"Every word," he said quietly. She threw her arm around him, and he handed Catherine back the food to hug her back. "I know you're mad, but-"

"Do you promise it's not my fault?"

"I promise." She hugged him for a moment longer before stepping back to look up at him. She hardly had to raise her chin anymore.

"Can you make another promise?"

"I'll try."

"Promise me that you'll find him. Bring Uncle Steve home, Danno. Promise?"

Danny looked to Catherine, who had tears of her own. She tried to smile, but she succeeded merely in grimacing.

How could he promise something like that when he knew that one of the most well-connected criminals in the world had Steve in his grasp? How could he make that promise to Grace without breaking her trust yet again?

But he wanted to fulfill the promise. He wanted to do everything in his power to bring Steve home. He hadn't done nearly enough two years ago, and he wanted to fix that now. But how could he?

"I…I promise to do my best, Monkey."

She smiled at him then, and his heart was lighter in that moment than it had been in years.

* * *

A/N: Aloha! Firstly, I'm so sorry that this is late. I had it about half done when my muses went on strike, and while I could have forced out a few more words and given you a half-baked chapter I didn't think that was fair. I'm still not entirely happy with the chapter, but it's better than it would have been on Saturday.

Also, my posting schedule may take a bit to get back to normal. I'll probably have Chapter 14 by Wednesday, and either Thursday or Friday should see Chapter 15. Hopefully (hopefully!) we'll get to Chapter 16 by Saturday. We'll have to see.

What do you think of Grace's characterization? Am I making her emotional rollercoaster seem realistic or does she seem even flatter than the show's version? I'd really appreciate a bit of feedback on this, especially.

Mahalo for reading, my friends, and I'll see you the next update!


	15. Kono 5

The room is empty when he opens his eyes.

His shoulders hurt, and his abdomen feels blistered. He wants to go back to sleep, back to where he knew the blond man and pale woman. He doesn't want the memories of dying strangers.

_Leave get out wake up go_

He has to go. It's not good to linger in places like this one. Besides, his next assignment is waiting.

Pain flares all over as he forces himself to his feet, but he calls upon all his practice at hiding pain and limps into the next room. The red stains on the floor make him wonder who bled in this place, but he is quickly distracted by the gun waiting on his table.

It feels good in his hand. Natural. Easy.

He leaves, but doesn't go too far.

Now he waits.

* * *

Kono fidgeted with her seatbelt as the car rolled to a stop at a red light. The car ride had been taut with unsaid words and unspoken feelings, from both her end and Chin's.

Two and a half years ago, they were cousins, best friends, partners.

A year ago, they were cousins and best friends, but their partnership was no more.

And what were they now? They were cousins, and she worked for him. They shared a past. That was about it.

Sure, there were moments where she felt connected to him again. When they met Danny at the airport and went to the shrimp truck, it seemed as if the last two or three years had never happened. She had felt as close to him as ever three weeks ago, when he and Malia had told her that they were trying for a baby.

Most of the time, the only thing keeping her from expressing her dislike for him was a cool sense of professionalism. She thought he felt the same way.

But suddenly, there they were, driving towards a potential crime scene to investigate the murder of their oldest perp. She suspected Chin had fought to get them this assignment, but she couldn't be sure.

If only she could spit out the question.

"It's been a while since we've investigated something this major," Chin said. Though his voice was quiet, Kono jumped in surprise. "You think you've still got what it takes?"

"Of course I do," she replied. He chuckled, causing her to glare. "What's so funny?"

"You sound more petulant than Grace did this morning," he laughed. "I've missed that about you."

"What are you talking about?"

"Your stubbornness. You've been so passive recently, even when you're protesting something. I've missed it." Chin looked over at her as the light turned green. "I've missed my cousin."

She turned her gaze away and watched the curb speed past as Chin accelerated. She wanted to tell him just how much she had missed herself, how she wanted things to go back to the way they were before the shooting, before Steve's kidnapping, but the words just wouldn't come out. Instead, she diverted the conversation. "So I take it the governor has cleared us to approach Wo Fat?"

"The governor doesn't know anything about…wait, how'd you know the governor banned us from investigating?"

She snorted. "You can't hide everything from me, Chin. I got a letter from his office, telling me that I was being watched and that if I did any investigation into Wo Fat, even a Google search while I was off-duty, I would be arrested for terrorism. I figured you would have gotten the same thing."

"That letter must have been sent to you by mistake," he said after a moment. "The governor told me that it was my job to make sure you didn't stick your nose in, and that he wasn't going to be warning you personally."

"You could have at least told me yourself," she started.

"Plausible deniability. If you had no idea what you were doing was illegal, it would be a lot harder to prosecute you."

"Okay, fine," she retorted, "but what really concerns me is the fact that they're threatening us with a life sentence for doing our jobs. Where does Denning get off, calling trying to find a bad guy who has our friend treason or terrorism or any kind of crime whatsoever?"

"If I'm not mistaken, Denning's not the one making all the calls anymore. I'd bet he got orders from someone higher up to make sure everyone around here kept away from Wo Fat." The car turned to the right, and Chin parked the car in front of a seemingly-abandoned warehouse. "This is our stop."

"Alright. Are we waiting for backup?"

"I don't see why, unless you spot movement inside." Chin Ho sounded different. Kono thought there was something of her cousin's old persona in there, and the idea made her smile.

Perhaps he wasn't such a wimp now, after all.

The warehouse was unlocked, despite the chain stretched loosely over its door. They went in quietly, Chin leading the way with his Mag drawn rather than his gun. "There doesn't seem to be anyone in here," he whispered. "Kono, go check the other rooms while I make sure we don't have any guests."

He was letting her go solo. She hadn't even asked this time. "Alright. Be careful."

"You too."

She crossed to the rooms that looked to have been offices at one time. In the dust and grime that resulted from months of disuse, multiple sets of footprints and a drag path were starkly visible. She skipped from one side to the other as the path shifted direction, praying that she wasn't stepping on the evidence. Something was creating quite a stench in one of the rooms, and it seemed a more pressing investigation than a possibly cold trail.

All thoughts of footprints left her mind when she shined her flashlight into the first room. "Chin, you need to see this!"

Her cousin ran to her side, and gagged at the sight her light still illuminated. "What the hell is this?"

A dried puddle of fluids attracted a large number of flies. Above it, a single chain with an attached pair of handcuffs dangled ominously from the ceiling. A desk bore several signs of torture: a cattle prod, a barbed whip, a collection of used hypodermic needles. Kono felt queasy just looking at the scene. "I'd say a torture chamber."

"This is just like…" Chin shook himself off and turned away. "I think I'll call in some backup, of sorts. I think Fong might want to come out of the basement for this one."

Kono hadn't seen it, but she had heard enough about the North Korean compound to realize that Chin was seeing it again here.

Sang Min had been here. Wo Fat's set-up was still here. Sang Min and Wo Fat were obviously, then, working together.

More importantly, who exactly was Wo Fat torturing?

The thought was almost too horrible, but Kono couldn't help but wonder if Steve was also back on the island.

* * *

A/N: Aloha! Mahalo once more for reading and reviewing. I really appreciate all of the support!

Take care until we meet again!


	16. Chin Ho 5

The waiting is the hardest part.

He feels like he needs to do something, anything, but all he can do is bounce his leg up and down.

The mission also grates on him. It seems wrong, but he has no choice. He has to do it.

His palms are sweating. Does he normally get this nervous before a simple mission? He doesn't remember nerves like these. His stomach turns, his breath is short. Why does he feel like this? Why can't he calm down?

The gun, which had fit so perfectly in his hand earlier, now feels weird and unnatural. He thinks he'll miss if he tries to shoot. He can't imagine hitting a target while his hand shakes so much.

He doesn't understand why he feels like this.

But his job isn't to understand.

His job is to complete the mission.

And he doesn't have a choice about that.

* * *

"Bad news," Chin said as he hung up the phone. "Charlie's car is in the shop, so he can't get down here unless we go get him."

"Why can't we just have another patrol bring him?" Kono raised an eyebrow at him. "You are calling in for backup on this, aren't you?"

He shook his head. "Not a chance. As of right now, we're two cops investigating a location where a murder victim might have been at one point or another. We call in HPD, this warehouse is going to be the center of attention the island over. Denning's going to hear about it, and he's going to hear about the torture chamber, and he'll know exactly what's going on. At the very least, we'll be booted back onto our regular duties. At most, he'll twist things to where it looks like we knew Wo Fat was in on this from the beginning and have us arrested. I don't like either of those options, how about you?"

His cousin stared at him for a moment before her face cracked into a large smile. "Are you suggesting subterfuge, Captain Kelly?"

"I suppose I am." He smiled back, and suddenly it seemed like nothing had changed between them. They were two cousins, best friends, sharing a joke and a smile.

Everything had changed, unfortunately. And they were standing right next to a torture chamber.

And yet, Kono's smile didn't fade away. "Well, we can't both go. Someone has to stay here and watch things. Why don't I get Fong?"

"I think he'd like that." Chin tossed her the keys. "Hurry back."

"And you stay safe, hear me?" Her eyes held pain for a brief moment before she waved and went outside. For the first time in a long time, he could read her thoughts. _I don't want you to get hurt, too._

"I will," he whispered. He waited until the engine's roar died down before pulling a digital camera from his bag. This scene had to be documented some time, and with only two officers and a lab tech on the case it was best to get an early start.

He found at least four unique sets of footprints aside from his and Kono's as he traced the path from the warehouse entrance to the torture room. He took pictures of each one, and started into the office itself. The smell stopped him dead in his tracks, like it had last time.

He knew that smell brought on the strongest memories, but he had never realized how true this was until this crime scene. The sharp odors of intermingled human waste and blood took him back to the compound. When he blinked, he saw Jenna Kaye lying pale and lifeless on the floor amongst some old crates. He heard the roaring of the helo as it landed urgently in front of them.

_What happened? I thought you guys had them in sights._

_We did._

_So where the hell is Steve?!_

_I missed._

He shook himself from his stupor and wiped his face clean of tears. Steve was gone. Lori had missed the only shot they had at taking him back, and damn it if he didn't know that it was at least partially his fault.

He had suggested that Kono stay behind and run tech from the South Korea. After all, she knew how to work everything better than anyone else on the team. It had made perfect sense at the time, and she certainly hadn't protested. She had never blamed him.

His cousin was one of the best sharpshooters he'd ever met, with the possible exception of Steve himself. If she had been the one in that helicopter, she'd never have missed the shot. She'd have stopped the caravan before it took off with Steve to parts unknown.

Steve would still be here, Five-0 would still be intact, Joe wouldn't be missing, Kono's life wouldn't have fallen apart…everything would be right.

Nothing seemed to be right with Chin's world anymore.

He turned away from the office, deciding to leave it for last, and followed the trail of footprints to the next room. This room was almost as bad as the torture room, or possibly even worse. Fresh and more dried blood puddled on the floor, as if someone had been beaten and thrown about the room like a toy. He shuddered at the thought.

The drag marks mostly stopped at the first puddle, though a second set seemed to lead to an open closet door in the back of the room. Another door, this one closed, connected this room to the torture office. And yet another door stood open, letting sunlight stream into the room. A new pair of footsteps led from the closet to the table next to this door, and presumably outside from there.

Chin looked quickly throughout the room before walking into the alley in the hopes of finding a set of tire tracks or more footprints.

Instead, he found himself face to face with a man.

The man had obviously been homeless for quite some time. His wife beater was ragged and filthy, and the black shirt on top of it was in no better condition. His jeans were holey and covered in some undeterminable muck, and his bare feet seemed to be just as sticky and black as the shirt. Long, lank strands of gooey, greasy hair hung from a once-white cap to cover his eyes, and a stringy collection of facial hair masked the rest of his face. One of his legs bounced up and down on the dumpster he was sitting on.

Although the man didn't move when Chin approached, the native Hawaiian could have sworn the haole's eyes locked onto him immediately. "Aloha. Do you live here?"

"You a cop?" The voice was raspy and full of mucus, but something about it stirred up Chin's memories.

"Maybe. Do you live here? Have you maybe seen anything strange this morning?"

"The only strange thing I see is you, pig." Chin narrowed his eyes, but the man still did not stir save for that bouncing leg. "I knew you were a cop the moment you walked through that door. What brings your stink 'round here?"

"I'm investigating a homicide, and my partner and I found some strange things inside. How about you and I wait around front for her to come back?"

The man smiled, and though the grin was yellow and missing some teeth, Chin felt another tug at his memories. "I don't think we're gonna wait around for some pretty little thing like that."

Before Chin could react, the homeless man had drawn a gun and fired it. The bullet struck his left clavicle, and he screamed in a mix of rage and pain as he tried for his own gun. The homeless man jumped from his dumpster and pointed the gun directly between his eyes. Chin noticed that his hands were shaking like an addict's. "There's nothing stopping me from ending you right now, you filthy pig."

Chin released his gun and covered his bleeding shoulder with his good hand. "If you kill me, there's going to be a manhunt as big as this island's ever seen. My name is Captain Chin Ho Kelly of the Honolulu Police Department."

The man's stance crumpled slightly at these words, much to Chin's confusion. "Chin Ho…Kelly…?" His head tilted down to look at his gun, as if in disbelief that he had just shot it.

"Yeah. Put the gun down and let me call for help, and maybe I can get you help too."

The homeless man was shaking like a leaf by this point, and his gun fell to his side as he took a shuddering breath. As strange as Chin found his reaction, he wasn't going to question it. He slowly moved his hand towards his pocket to get his phone.

Three shots rang out before Chin could dial dispatch. For a moment, everything stood still around him. He was acutely aware of the homeless man's rotted mouth opening in a shout, but he did not hear him. A breeze swept down the alley, its coolness soothing. He thought he heard Malia laughing in the distance, and although it should have seemed strange he found it perfectly natural.

Then he fell to his knees, and to his face from there. He couldn't feel the individual bullet holes in his back, but an alarmingly dull pressure told him that he had been struck multiple times. His shoulder barely hurt, even though its pain should have been exasperated by him falling onto it. He mostly just felt an overwhelming lethargy as he stared down the alley. His body wanted to sleep. His mind screamed that sleep would be a terrible decision.

Words came to him from somewhere as he fought not to close his eyes.

I knew you'd pansy out.

You son of a—

Aw, c'mon, I did you a favor. Let's scram, before that girl comes back. I think she was going to get more cops.

You shot him! You killed him!

Bang.

Bang.

His vision grew rapidly dimmer as he heard a thud in the far distance. In another dimension, something brushed his hand, shook him, pressed on the almost diminished pain.

Please help, there's…Ho Kelly…shot him, I shot…someone over…fore he…

And his vision blacked out, and his eyes slid shut.

And he didn't feel anything anymore.

Before he dies.

* * *

A/N: Hate mail to the left, please. T_T


	17. Danny 6

Danny sat in Governor Denning's waiting room, anxiously tapping his fingers while he pretended to read a magazine that had been out of issue the last time he was here. He was angry, confused, and slightly bitter, but a deep sense of nervousness overpowered his other emotions.

How the governor even knew his phone number was a mystery to him, for it had changed since he left Hawaii. Danny wasn't naïve enough to assume the governor didn't know he was on the island, but the fact that Denning himself had called him to the statehouse meant he knew his phone number…and wanted something badly.

He already knew what he would say if asked to help out on a case. If—and only if—Denning wanted him to investigate the claims that Wo Fat was back on the island or help Chin and Kono investigate Sang Min, he would help out part time. Otherwise, he was flatly refusing. After all, he was supposed to be on vacation, and his emotionally distraught daughter could only stay with Catherine for so long at a time.

Nodding to reaffirm his decisions, he turned the page in the old magazine. Instead of the next page of an article on some had-been starlet's antics, he was met with an advertisement for Silverados. The full-page ad featured a fisherman with short, dark hair, and his face was so out of focus that it seemed to Danny he was looking at a picture of Steve again. He threw down the magazine and wiped away his sudden tears as a young woman walked towards him.

"The governor will see you now, Detective." She smiled at him and led the way to Denning's office, pushing open one large door and gesturing him in.

Denning's office had hardly changed over the years. Every piece of furniture was in the same place, every painting was in the same place, even the cup of pens on his desk seemed to be in the exact place. Denning himself was standing in much the same position that Danny had last seen him in: back straight, shoulders tensed, hands folded behind his back, body facing the largest window. All of the sameness increased the nervousness bubbling in Danny's stomach tenfold.

"Good afternoon, sir."

"Detective Williams," Denning responded. "I'm glad you came."

"It sounded urgent, sir," Danny said. "Care to explain what was so important that you took me from my daughter who, if you don't know, was-"

"Involved in a hostage situation yesterday," the governor interrupted. He turned, and Danny was alarmed to see that his eyes were every bit as serious as when he had heard about North Korea. "I'm very much aware of the circumstances, and I hope she's recovering adequately. After seeing the twelve o'clock news, I've asked the local stations to back off from the story. I can't imagine you and Grace enjoyed being hounded at every turn."

"Not exactly. Thank you."

Denning sighed. "I called you here to ask a favor. We need help."

"Who does?"

"The state of Hawaii and the Honolulu Police Department." He gestured to one of the plush chairs in front of his desk. "Have a seat."

Danny sat carefully, trying to avoid further irritating his stomach. "I don't know why you think I can be of help. I'm just a New Jersey cop on vacation."

"No, you're also Five-0. I'd like to reinstate you to the team."

Of everything he had expected to hear, this was not on the list. "Sorry?"

"I've already cleared it with your chief. Until we get this case solved, you're staying."

"That's _if_ I accept your job offer. Did you forget the part where my daughter is recovering from being nearly kidnapped by Sang Min? And the part where you disbanded Five-0 after McGarrett disappeared?" Danny chuckled sardonically. "If you think I'm just going to skip merrily back to the office and start up the old computers, you've got another thing coming."

"Detective, I can tell that my actions two years ago have embittered you to the idea of-"

"Understatement of the year, Governor. You forced us apart, threatened to arrest us if we told anyone the truth of McGarrett's disappearance, any of the truth! And don't feed me that bull about you not really stopping us, because someone gave the order for us not to be allowed to contact our friends in the Navy and we all know it's you! And now you're threatening to chuck Captain Kelly and Detective Kalakaua in prison if they investigate claims that an international arms dealer who Five-0 investigated for nearly a year is back on the island, and you expect us all to be okay with that?! Because we're not!"

Governor Denning looked at Danny for a few moments after his rant, his eyes unreadable. Danny's stomach churned even harder, and he just knew that he was going to throw up if Denning didn't tell him why he was really here and dispel his nerves. "I admit that I have made mistakes, but there is much you do not understand about the situation. Furthermore," he said loudly as Danny started to retort, "you and your former teammates are not the only ones being gagged on the disappearance of Lieutenant Commander McGarrett. Did it ever occur to you that I may have gotten orders, too? And that as much as I wanted to let all of you investigate, to do so would be suicidal for all of our careers and possibly our lives?

"Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to brief you on this case before it goes cold." Danny wanted to spit more bitter words at the governor, but he managed to restrain himself after a short battle of wills. "Thank you. First of all, I am releasing you from the gag order covering Wo Fat and McGarrett's disappearance, provided you be sensible about whom you talk to."

Danny raised his eyebrows. "What? What could have possibly made you decide to put _me_, of all people, on this case after all this time?"

"I told you already: you're Five-0. You have the background I think is necessary to investigate the case." Denning stood once more and turned to look out his window. "An officer was shot this morning in an alley. Nearby evidence suggests that Wo Fat is at least indirectly responsible, and chances are that this is only the beginning."

His mouth filled with the taste of bile as he struggled not to throw up. He was beginning to sweat from the anxiety and stress this conversation was causing. "So you want me to track down Wo Fat and whoever else is involved in this shooting?"

"And bring them to swift justice, yes. Do you accept this case?"

"Of course." Though he had told himself earlier that he would make this decision, his gut didn't calm down in the slightest. The sudden slump in Denning's shoulders didn't help matters at all. "Does Dr. Bergman have the body? I'll start my investigation there, as soon as I pick up Chin and Kono. That is, if I'm allowed to borrow them."

Denning turned around, his expression still unreadable. "There is no body as yet. Our officer is still alive, but it's too soon to tell if he will survive his injuries. At my last update, he still wasn't stable enough to have surgery, and if they can't repair the damage..."

"I see." Danny wiped his forehead and breathed in through his nose, trying to quell the nausea that still threatened to overtake him. Something about Denning's stance and general air was increasing his nerves. "Can I recruit my own team? And can Officer Kalakaua and Captain Kelly be a part of it?"

"You'll have to ask Kalakaua. As for Kelly…he won't be joining you." Danny's breath hitched in his chest. "He's your victim."

Danny stared blankly at the governor before running to the bathroom that connected to the office, expelling the fast food Catherine had brought for lunch. He continued to retch for over a minute, even after his stomach was emptied of anything resembling contents.

Chin Ho was his victim. Chin Ho was potentially dying. Chin Ho wasn't going to be able to help him.

When he returned to the office after splashing water on his face, Denning handed him a glass of water. He drank it gratefully, but it tasted like volcanic ash on his tongue. He still felt seasick, somehow. The news was so unexpected that it hit him almost as hard as Steve's kidnapping. There was no way to prepare for that kind of news, and the governor seemed to be aware of thit.

"Kelly and Kalakaua had been assigned to work the Sang Min case, and according to HPD they were in the process of investigating a crime scene that, when described to me, reminded me of the compound you and the others told me about. I'm giving you the Sang Min case too, because I have a feeling it's going to lead you straight to Wo Fat."

"Yes, sir."

"HPD is available to assist you, as are all of your previous resources. I suggest you recruit someone to act as your partner during this time, HPD or otherwise."

Danny nodded. "I need to get to the hospital. Which hospital is he in?"

"Tripler, but you need to start this investigation first."

"My victim is there, sir," Danny said quietly. "So is his partner, who can probably shed more light on things than anyone else I know of. I have to talk to Kono."

"Very well. Your office will be reopened by the time you make it there." Denning turned around again, and Danny recognized it for the dismissal it was.

As he made his way through the cool, marbled halls of the statehouse, his stomach clenched again. How was he supposed to run Five-0 without any of his former teammates?

He didn't know, but he did know something else. He was going to find out who shot Chin. And he was going to find Wo Fat.

And he was going to pay them back in kind for everything they'd ever done to his ohana.

* * *

A/N: I do love me some vengeful Danno.

Mahalo for all of your support! If you've reviewed me and I'm able to PM you, I'll continue to respond to your reviews. As for those of you who are logged in as guests or have PM turned off, just know that I appreciate your feedback just as much. And a special BIG mahalo to Forest Rose, who is constantly editing my chapters even though she refuses to make a real account on here.

I know this chapter is a day early (wow, did I really just post three chapters in three days?!), but I'm solidly booked tomorrow and the better part of Sunday. I didn't want to risk not getting this posted on time or even close to on time, so here it is early. Next week should bring us back to our regular schedule (hopefully).

Aloha nui loa, my friends!


	18. Kono 6

Kono's vision didn't seem to work properly.

Everything around her was in sharp focus, but she still couldn't see clearly. People surrounded her, asking questions and screaming insults, but she couldn't really hear them either.

"I have to go," she said softly. She stood from the waiting room chair and walked into the hallway, aware that her body was entirely numb to her. Someone called her name, but she ignored them and floated down the hall.

Chin Ho had died, just like she had. Her big cousin, her hero, the only person to stand by her for her entire life, had died. That he had been brought back to life was no consolation to her, because she had never felt more guilty about anything in her entire life.

Him being shot was on her. Unlike when Sang Min had shot her and Adam and Chin had blamed himself for not reading far enough between the lines to stop it, she had been there. She had been right there at the warehouse with him, and she had left him with no backup. She had abandoned him, like he had never done to her.

And he had died because of it.

"Officer Kalakaua?" She was jolted from her internal turmoil by a hand on her shoulder. It was Adam's doctor. She didn't remember coming up to his floor. "I was wondering when I'd see you again. It's been a few days."

"A lot has happened," she mumbled. The doctor didn't seem to notice her shocked disposition.

"I wanted to give you an update on his condition. You see, there have been some changes in his brainwave patterns, which suggests that…Officer Kalakaua, is everything alright?"

"No." She looked at the doctor for a moment longer before walking the rest of the way to Adam's room, ignoring his startled reply.

Adam looked exactly like he had every other time she'd been to see him: pale, gaunt, and lifeless. The flowers she had brought to liven up the place were beginning to wilt, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She just stroked his cheek gently before turning away, trying to overcome the tears that had suddenly formed in her eyes.

"Hi Kono." She looked up to see Malia smiling sadly at her.

"What are you doing here?"

"I saw your car as I was driving out, and I knew you'd be up here." Malia walked to take her hand, but Kono pulled away. "Am I interrupting?"

"Why aren't you—didn't you—you don't know?" Kono's tears spilled onto her cheeks, and she struggled to keep her chin from wobbling.

"Know what? If you left me a message on my phone, it's currently at home in a bowl of rice. I dropped it right into my glass of water last night." Kono hiccupped, and Malia's face grew more concerned. "What's happened? Did they make a decision to take Adam off life support or-"

"It's Chin Ho." The doctor's face froze. "He was…he was shot today."

"Where is he?"

"ER. I thought you were there already, that's why I didn't tell you myself." She hiccupped again as Malia led her from Adam's room. "Didn't they tell you?"

"I've been officially off duty for a couple of hours now," she said calmly. "The staff probably assumed I was at home or on my way there, but I've been down in the cafeteria with a friend. How bad is it?"

"They had to shock him back." Malia flinched slightly, but quickly retained her stalwart expression. "He was shot three times in the back, once in the shoulder from the front. Malia, it's all my fault."

"Unless you pulled the trigger, it's not even slightly your fault." Malia and Kono boarded the staff elevator, the former slapping the button so hard Kono was surprised it didn't break. "Was he conscious?"

"They won't let any of us in, and I wasn't there for it. I had to go pick up our backup, and then…"

_Great to see you, but are we still going?_

_Of course, Fong, why wouldn't we?_

_I figured you and Chin Ho would be responding to the shooting._

_There's plenty of people to do that._

_But it's a cop._

_What?!_

_You didn't hear?_

_I went through quite a bit of interference on the way here, I must have missed it. Let me call Chin…that's probably him now. Hello?_

_Kono._

_Duke? What's…why are you calling me from Chin's phone? What's going on?! Where is Chin?!_

_I'm so sorry.  
_

"Kono, don't believe for a minute that you're at fault. Chin Ho would laugh at you, and besides, he's alive now. That's all that matters."

The elevator doors opened and Malia rushed through the halls. Kono was slightly out of breath by the time she caught up to her in the ER. An argument had broken out between some of her cousins and someone else, and everyone else in the waiting room was watching with furious expressions. "You ain't got no more right than the rest of us, haole!"

"He's our family!" Malia squeezed Kono's hand for a moment before swiping her card at the trauma unit doors and sliding inside.

"He's my family too, just not in the same way as the rest of you." Danny's voice carried over the heads of her tallest family members, and Kono furrowed her brow as she made for the group. "I just need an update on his condition and I'll leave you all in peace."

"We have had no updates, and a haole cop like you is one of the last people we would give that information to." Chin Ho's mother stood up at Danny's words, and Kono winced at her expression. "You will not be investigating this crime. I will speak to your chief."

"I'm not working for HPD, I'm-" Danny was cut off by protests and jeers from Kono's family, and she could hear him sighing in frustration.

"Auntie," she said, moving to stand next to Danny, "please don't antagonize him. Detective Williams is a very dear friend of Chin's and mine."

"The fact that he is your friend is supposed to make me like him?" her aunt sneered. "Neither of you are welcome here, and that is a fact. Get out. Out!"

"Makuahine?" The entire collection of angry family members turned to see Malia standing by the admission desk. Her cheek had a smudge of blood on it, and her eyes were red and slightly puffy. "He's not yet stable enough for surgery, but they think they have him out of immediate danger. They can't tell exactly how much damage there is to his internal organs, but the worst of the bleeding has been stopped."

"I do not trust you," Chin's mother said sniffily. Malia blanched. "Get me his real doctor."

"They're probably busy trying to get him to where he can have surgery, Auntie," Kono said quietly.

"Stay out of this! All three of you, you're bad for my Chin Ho!" she snarled gesturing to Malia and Danny while she glared at Kono. "Leave, now!"

"I'm not going anywhere," said Malia. She turned and stiffly walked back into the trauma unit amidst protests from the family.

"I think it's best if we do go," Danny said quietly. Kono glared at him, but he pulled her outside before the insults began again.

"I'm not leaving Chin!" she said, struggling to free her arm. He refused to let her go, instead turning her around to face him. "Danny, let go!"

"The governor has just restarted Five-0 for the express purposes of finding out who did this and tracking down Wo Fat. I'm the leader. Will you have my back or not?"

It took her a while to process Danny's words. Five-0…Wo Fat…the governor? Danny the leader?

"Kono? I could really use your help." Danny's eyes bored into her. Her body went slightly numb again.

This was the only way she could ever come close to redeeming herself for failing Chin. If she could track down and kill the man who had tried to kill her cousin, she would probably even be reaccepted into her family, but she didn't care about that.

Revenge sounded like a sweet dish to her right now.

"I've got your back."

* * *

A/N: Aloha! I hope the emotions in this chapter seem legitimate and real. I was all in the mood to write a chapter full of angst and despair when my cousin informed me that Kingdom Hearts III has finally been put into development. As you may be able to tell by my name, I'm kind of a fan of the Kingdom Hearts series (read: I am a HUGE fan of the Kingdom Hearts series), and the fact that we fans have been waiting for well over eight years to get the final game in the trilogy has made this announcement huge. Needless to say, I'm afraid that some of my emotion in this chapter may not be deep or true, because I'm so elated at this point.

Anyhow, I'll see you on Thursday. Things might be a little different this next time 'round...


	19. Blank 1

_She's a smart lady, that one._

_I know you._

_You better! Chin Ho Kelly!_

Chin Ho Kelly.

Chin.

He knew him. He knew him, he knew him, he knew him.

And he shot him.

There would be cops all over the island, searching for him. Part of him wanted to find out where HPD headquarters was and turn himself in, get it over with, serve whatever punishment they deemed fit even though it could never rest his soul, but he wasn't able to.

He didn't even know if Chin was still alive. The cop had still been bleeding when he'd run, but he'd been afraid to take his hands off the wounds long enough to look for a pulse. He had a feeling he'd seen dead bodies that still leaked blood before, but he couldn't remember when.

It didn't matter, anyhow. Even if Chin was alive, even if Chin was perfectly fine at this very moment, even if that monster hadn't shown up to "help", he would still be guilty as sin itself.

He'd shot Chin in cold blood.

He remembered dragging someone—his mother, maybe?—to football games, week after week, just to watch Chin Ho Kelly play. Had he, too, been a quarterback? Or had he just been another adoring fan? He couldn't know for sure, but he remembered that Chin Ho had been a good football player and later, a good cop.

His phone rang again. It had rung several times since the shooting. He had yet to answer it. Didn't want to answer questions, didn't want to get new orders. He was tired.

So tired.

His feet were leading him somewhere. His body seemed to have a better memory than his mind. Hands knew how to hold a gun or staunch a bleeding wound, feet knew their way around, eyes recognized people that he couldn't name.

He'd recognized Chin. He'd told himself Chin was just one of the cops on the scene when he shot Sang Min and nothing more, and that had made it easier to complete his mission. Then Chin had gone and said his name aloud, and suddenly he was so overtaken with memories that he could hardly stay on his feet.

_Worked with your father cop money uncle broke all my records_

_Hey brah, you feeling okay?_

Something else Chin had said rang in his memory. "My partner…her…"

He thought he might know this mysterious partner, too. It felt right.

But why in the hell would he know Chin Ho Kelly, let alone his partner? And why would he be assigned to shoot a cop when he apparently knew some of them…was maybe friends with some of them?

He couldn't remember having a friend. But Chin, and that blond man at the house, they felt like friends if he thought about it. He didn't even know what the hell that dark-haired woman had felt like, but it was close to friendly.

Was he just making it up? Or could he have friends?

He just wanted to remember. He wanted to remember a life before dark rooms filled with pain and dizziness and orders. His mind had other ideas.

"Yo, brah!" He jumped and put his hand on his gun at the loud shout. A teenager was walking towards him, a bundle of cloth in his hands. "We're giving these away today down here on the beach, but we're almost out. You look like you could use it."

"Why?" he muttered.

"Community service requirement at Kukui High. There's a lot…homeless people…brah."

He should have declined, meant to decline, but the mention of Kukui sent him reeling. When his mind settled again, his feet were taking him into a small building. His hands were juggling a few quarters and the new clothes. He couldn't remember having had a shower before, but the cool water running down his body felt nice for the most part. He expected the dirt to fall away, but many of the dark spots remained even after he wiped at them. Bruises, and cuts. There were a lot of cuts and burns and other abrasions, some fresh and some scarred over. He didn't remember getting them, but some small corner of his mind informed him that they appeared in the dark rooms.

The clothes didn't fit him. The pants sagged past his hips, especially with his gun in the waistband, and the white shirt looked more like a sail advertising Kukui. Before going back outside, he used his last quarter to wash off his black flannel shirt. He couldn't have those kids see his arms and freak out, and they certainly would if they saw the shape of them. He ripped his old tank into strips and tied them together to make a cheap belt. His hands remembered doing something like this once, in a jungle for some reason, but instead of a belt he'd made bandages.

After he was dressed he started back outside, his gun and phone precariously perched in his pants pockets. The weak cloth wouldn't last as a belt for long, and he decided he'd have to steal a real one soon.

His thoughts were interrupted by a man approaching him, and he pulled his gun at the same moment the other man did.

This man had long brown hair, too, and it was almost as wet as his. His beard was long and bushy, and his over-shirt was ragged. The eyes, though, made him want to shoot his gun and lower it at the same time.

They were so sad. Grey, tinged with a little bit of green at the edges. Long lashes. They seemed a little red, too, as if the mystery man had been crying recently.

More than anything, those eyes were so familiar. He'd looked into those eyes in a past life, but they'd rarely looked so sad before. Narrowed in anger? Yes. Crinkled in the corners with a smile? Sometimes. Large and sad? Hardly ever.

As he began to lower his gun, the other man did too, and he finally realized that he was staring into a mirror. That sad man was him.

He found it somewhat comforting to realize that he hadn't always been so sad. The fact that he'd known other emotions soothed him as well, because he couldn't remember ever having emotions until today. He knew pain, and he'd known dizziness, and he'd known helplessness. He'd never known happy, or angry, or sad. Not until today.

He left the shower house and waved to the teenagers before moving up the beach. In the distance, he saw a large yellow truck and some picnic tables. His mind suddenly leaped to life, urging him to go there immediately, but his feet turned him up towards the sidewalk and road. There were a lot of people there. He'd blend in better.

His phone rang again as he walked up the street, looking for a shop with a belt display outside. His hands betrayed his mind and flipped it open.

"I was beginning to think you'd forgotten your new phone answering orders." He said nothing. "Did you finish the mission? Have you killed the cops who came to the warehouse?"

"Only one found me." He ducked into an alleyway, away from spying ears.

The voice on the other end sighed. "Can't be helped, I suppose. One of them is out of the way now, though, is that right? That means only two are left."

"I didn't kill him."

There was a long silence on the other end. "Say that again."

"I didn't kill him. Chin Ho Kelly. Did you say you knew he would be there?"

"What did you do?"

"That friend of yours, the big guy, he shot him too. He might be dead from that-"

"Why didn't you kill him?!"

"I know him."

"No you don't. Your mind is playing tricks on you again. I told you this might happen. This island does strange things to people's minds."

"Did you know Chin Ho Kelly would be at that warehouse? And his partner, too? Is that why you ordered me to kill the cops who came there, so they'd be out of your grand picture? Does this have anything to do with Shelburne?"

There was another silence, then a loud popping noise. His head swims. The same noise again. He couldn't focus on anything but the phone against his ear.

"You will receive a message. You will come to the enclosed address. You will come inside. You will do this immediately. You will stop asking questions. Nothing else matters." Another pop, and the line clicked dead.

He leaned against the wall and held his head in his hands. He felt like something had been drained from his mind, and it made him feel tired. So much was sitting on the tip of his tongue, but it all fled every time he tried to voice it, even to himself.

His phone buzzed, and he immediately opened the text message to get the address.

As his feet began walking, something came back into his mind.

Chin Ho Kelly.

Chin.

He knew him.

* * *

A/N: Howdy, readers. I hope you enjoyed getting to catch up with our "mystery man". Poor guy.

I want to apologize in advance for not posting anything on Saturday. I'm going to be on a road trip to San Francisco starting tomorrow, and I probably won't have the time to write the next chapter, let alone post something. I'm not sure when I'll get the regular posting schedule back up, but you'll at least have the next three chapter by next Thursday or Friday.

Mahalo!


	20. Danny 7

Danny sighed as he watched Mrs. Lee guide Grace into the apartment complex. Grace was still staring at him in disbelief that he would even think of leaving her at a friend's house, but he couldn't begin to tell her why he was doing it.

How could his daughter possibly handle the fact that he'd just been assigned to track down the people who had just tried to kill her Uncle Chin? After the information dump she'd experienced earlier in the day, she'd probably go into a catatonic state or something. He couldn't bear to put her through the torture of knowing that yet another of her favorite people was at risk of death.

He almost didn't answer when his cell phone rang, but Grace disappeared into the complex's lobby and he suddenly welcomed the distraction. "Williams."

"Hey, Danny, it's Catherine." Her voice sounded pinched, probably the result of stress. "I've just applied for leave, and I'm working on getting it approved on the quick. My CO's good about that sort of thing, but sometimes stuff comes up and then none of us are able to do anything about it and it all takes even longer than its supposed to and with my luck I'll probably get handed orders instead of leave and then I don't even know what I'll do because you'll be hung out to dry and I'm doing my-"

"Catherine!" She stopped mid-sentence. "Just do what you can and let me know what happens. Kono and I will be just fine without you for now, so just take a few moments and try some deep breathing exercises or something. Seriously, it's okay."

"How can you say it's okay?! Chin could be dying, and two people working that case is NOT enough!"

"You won't even be officially on the case, so don't start with that. Call me back when you hear something concrete." With that, he hung up and put his face in his hands.

She was right. Two people working the case wouldn't be enough, but three wouldn't be much better. Five-0 was a team of four, and it didn't work right when there were more or less than that.

Then again, it didn't work right when it didn't consist of him, Kono, Chin Ho, and Steve.

After some deep breathing of his own, he made for the warehouse. Traffic was lighter than usual, but he so dreaded approaching the crime scene that it felt as if he got there in five minutes. A small crowd and the usual gaggle of reporters surrounded a barrier of yellow tape that kept the warehouse and the surrounding area entirely off limits, and Summer Thompson turned just in time to see Danny get out of his car. Her red hair seemed to inflate in excitement as she rushed over. "Mr. Williams, what a surprise! Have you come to join the vigil for information on the lead investigator of your daughter's attempted kidnapping? How about an interview on your feelings?"

He rolled his eyes and flashed his badge. "That's Detective Williams, thank you very much, and I'm not at liberty to discuss anything about this case. No comment."

"Detective?!" Thompson's cry drew the attention of the rest of the bystanders, and suddenly Danny's progress toward the tape was impeded by eager reporters clamoring for an interview. When Ken Suichi's microphone actually hit him in the eye, Danny finally snapped.

"For the last time, I have NO COMMENT! If you continue this harassment I'll have the lot of you thrown into lock up for obstruction of justice and disturbance of peace, so I suggest you all back off and go back to your newsrooms, because we'll be calling your stations if and when we decide to release any information on this case!" Batting Suichi's microphone away, Danny shouldered his way through the mass of journalists and ducked under the tape. An unfamiliar ME was closing the doors on an Autopsy van under the watchful eye of Duke Lukela, whose face seemed more aged than ever. "Hey man, you doing alright?"

"I was hoping the rumors about Five-0 were true," Duke said solemnly, "because this is a case that needs special attention. HPD doesn't have enough power to do Chin Ho justice."

"Yeah, I get what you mean," Danny said quietly. He felt overwhelmed just watching the ME's van drive away from the alley. That could have been Chin in that van. He could be the one covered by a sheet, on his way to be sliced open on a cold table.

The worst part was that Chin could still end up on that same table, and nothing Danny could possibly do would prevent that from happening.

"Could you walk me through what happened here? I assume Kono's already been here to take evidence to Fong, right?"

"Yes, she left about thirty minutes ago with some of the evidence from the alley. CSI is still going over the warehouse. We believe that Chin was following a trail of footprints when he came into the alley," Duke started, gesturing to a series of bloody smudges from an open warehouse door. "When we found him, he was on his stomach facing east and didn't appear to have been moved."

"So the dead guy was indeed our shooter," Danny said, looking over his shoulder at a large pool of blood. "So who shot our shooter?"

"That's up to you to find out," Duke responded. "I'd check out the 911 call if I were you."

"Yeah. It's on my list, right after taking a look in this warehouse." Danny moved towards the door, but Duke put out a hand to stop him. "Whoa, what's wrong?"

"I haven't been inside yet, but the way Kono kept looking over here and the fact that our techs keep coming out looking green…it has to be bad. Just thought I should warn you."

Danny nodded and tried to quell his nerves as he went into the door. He had already seen the North Korean compound, and he couldn't imagine a warehouse in Honolulu being worse than that.

The first room had several pools of blood and an empty closet. A quick glance told Danny that someone had been beaten in the room before being put in the closet for whatever reason, and the trail of footprints from the alley seemed to have come from the closet. Maybe one of the shooters was responsible for the carnage in here, or maybe one of them had been the victim of the beatings.

He followed the sounds of techs to the main warehouse. Several men and women were scouring the abandoned building, dusting anything left behind for prints and testing any stains for blood. One of them stood in a second doorway, holding his camera so tightly that he seemed to think it might run away from him. Danny went to his side. "Any news?"

"Not really. We haven't found any prints, and the lab will have to tell you about any DNA they get from all of…this…" The tech stood aside and tilted his head towards the room. Danny stepped closer and recognized the stench of bodily fluids and blood immediately. This was the room the governor had told him about. "Once I'm done documenting this scene, I'll dust the room properly. We haven't touched any of the…devices."

The room threatened to overwhelm Danny. The chain and manacles, the cattle prod, even the scuff marks in the blood underneath the chain took him back to North Korea. Wo Fat was involved, no doubt about it. He turned away before he lost his cool entirely. "Okay, just make sure you get it to Charlie Fong as soon as you can. We need to figure this out before they have time to set up another one of these places."

"You bet." The tech went back to taking photos of different sections of the room and Danny hurried away. The air of the alley had seemed to reek of blood earlier, but it smelled incredibly fresh when he made it outside. Compared to that torture room, anything would smell fresh.

His phone rang as he made for the yellow tape, and he stopped out of earshot of the reporters. "Williams."

"Danny, do we still have the old office?"

"Yeah, why?"

"You need to meet me there. Now." Kono's voice was blunt and guarded at the same time, not giving away anything but urgency. "How far away are you?"

"Maybe twenty minutes with traffic, I don't know. What's wrong?"

"Make it fifteen." With that, Kono disconnected. Danny stared at his phone for a few seconds afterwards, not quite believing the ferocity she had developed for the last statement.

If he hadn't known better, he'd think she had been taking courtesy lessons from Steve.

* * *

A/N: Sorry this is so late, my friends! I got bogged down in real life, and then my muse apparently stayed in California for an extra week when I flew home. The good news is that I'll have three chapters out this week, counting this one.

Mahalo once again to Forest Rose for her help with editing. Khgirl08, out!


	21. Kono 7

Kono paced the office anxiously, glaring at the clock on the computer screen every few steps. Danny should have been there five minutes ago by his timing, which made him ten minutes later than she had asked. "What the hell is taking him so long?!" she muttered furiously.

"An overeager reporter attempted to shove a recorder up my left nostril," came the answer. "I had to turn him over to Duke and get something to stop the resulting nosebleed." Danny stopped next to the computer, and Kono was torn between groaning, laughing, and yelling when she saw the tampon stuck inside his nose. "I don't have a first aid kit in my rental, and one of the reporters gave me this so I could hit the road. It works."

"I bet it does," she grumbled. "I just got back from the lab. I called you from right beside Fong's computer."

"What's the emergency? You'd think some of the evidence included the details of a terrorist bombing."

She narrowed her eyes. "The blood samples from the scene came back way faster than Fong thought they would. Aside from Chin's," she stopped to swallow the sudden lump in her throat, "Fong identified two separate samples. Our dead guy came back as Adam."

"Wait, you mean-"

"Yes, Adam Noshimuri, my comatose boyfriend. Oh, but it gets better: there was another sample, from the footprints and the dumpster, and the results came back to none other than Sang Min."

"You're joking." Danny ran his hands through his hair and muttered something unintelligible. "So we've got a dead guy who apparently has the same DNA as your boyfriend and some identical twin of Sang Min running around with a gun in his hand, right?"

"Sang Min's fingerprint was also on Chin's cell phone, which was used to make the 911 call. Someone's hacked into the database, obviously, and they're doing it specifically to screw around with us." Her blood still ran cold just remembering when Adam's information had appeared on Fong's search results. His driver's license photo was ridiculously perfect, and it made her long for his smile again. "Charlie's going to try and trace the source of the hack and see if he can recall the relevant information."

"Ah, hell," Danny suddenly cursed. "You weren't kidding about them specifically trying to screw with us." Kono raised an eyebrow at him, and he leaned against the computer console with a pained sigh. "A couple of months ago, a guy back in Jersey was going around killing former felons, but only ones who our department didn't know by sight and who had DNA on record. Whenever we'd run DNA or prints, the records would come back to someone in my department. I was our last victim."

"That's creepy," Kono said. "Did you catch him?"

"Yeah, turned out to be a former computer tech from our department who got fired. We stopped him after three victims, but still…" Danny shuddered. "Whoever is behind this knew about that case, and knew that we'd be investigating."

"But how did they even know that Chin and I were on the case in the first place?" she asked. "This just screams of an inside job. Someone in HPD is helping Wo Fat."

"You think it's him too, then?"

She chuckled hollowly. "Of course it's him, Danny. Who else would have the connections to pull this off, who else would be twisted enough to set up a torture chamber like that? Wo Fat is at the heart of this whole case, and now we have confirmation that Sang Min was involved with him in some fashion, too."

Danny nodded but said nothing. She fell silent, too, and just tried to handle everything that had happened over the last several hours.

Chin Ho had arranged for the two of them to work on a low-key investigation into Sang Min's murder, they had stumbled onto a torture chamber like in North Korea, Chin Ho had been shot, her own family had told her she wasn't welcome at the hospital, Five-0 had been restarted, and now someone was dragging Adam into the case. Danny was her partner, and Catherine was trying her best to join the team.

Her mind threatened to explode with all the emotions and facts tied together within her skull. "What now, boss?"

"Don't call me that," Danny said immediately. "Danny, Daniel, even Detective Williams if you have to, but not 'Boss'. Put 'Danno' on the do-not-use list, for that matter."

"Yeah, sorry," she responded. She didn't bother to tell him that as soon as the nickname had rolled off her tongue she had remembered that Steve wasn't there, and that her mouth had filled with a sour taste. "So where do we start, Danny?"

"Well, our Sang Min impersonator called 911, right? Maybe we can get something off the tape. Can you access it from here?" Danny made a strange face after he spoke, like the sour taste had filled his mouth too.

"I was expecting the computer to be a dinosaur by now, but it seems Denning has kept it with the times for whatever reason." Kono pressed a few keys on the tabletop and swiped the screen to the side. An audio player appeared on the screen, ready to be played. "Fong and I were about to listen to it when we got the search results on the blood and prints, so I had him send it over here."

Danny reached over to press play, and the office filled with the sound of the call. "911, what's your emergency?" asked a kind female voice.

"Please help, there's an officer down! Chin Ho Kelly, Captain Chin Ho Kelly! I shot him, I shot him and he's in really bad condition, you need to send someone over here before he dies!" Kono winced at the gravelly shouting. This man had a serious problem if he was talking like that.

"Sir, what is your location?"

"The abandoned shipping warehouses on Kingston Street, down by the piers! You have to get medics here before he dies. I don't know if I can keep him from bleeding out." The caller coughed loudly and cleared his throat before continuing. "ETA?"

Kono froze. She heard the operator as if from a distance, telling the caller that emergency personnel would be there within ten minutes. Then she continued to ask questions, but her only answer was a click. Kono couldn't process the idea that the mystery man had just hung up, mostly because the voice was so familiar.

When her mind acclimated itself to her body once more, she saw the same stunned expression on Danny's face. "Please tell me…that can't be…"

"No. No, that person was ill, and it was just a weird coincidence." Danny turned away from Kono and put his hand over his eyes. "There's no way that was…that was _not_ Steven McGarrett."

Kono wanted to believe him, but her thoughts kept drifting to the times she'd heard her boss utter those three letters. That tone had been all business, unlike the panicked explanation of her cousin's condition. "Are you-"

"It _can't_ be Steve, Kono! Because if that was Steve on that line, that means Steve was the one who shot Chin Ho and that means he's a fugitive and _that_ means we have to find him and arrest him for trying to kill one of his closest friends and murdering another man, and I can't accept any of that!" Danny turned back around, and she was unsurprised to see his eyes shining with tears. "Besides, it was just three letters. That means nothing. Anyone could have said those."

"But Danny," she started, but he kept talking over her.

"Our emotions are just running high because of what we found at the warehouse today and the shooting, and then being back in this office is playing tricks on us, you know?" He sighed, smacked the edge of the table, and turned away. "I need some coffee. You want some?"

She stared at him for a long moment before nodding. "Sure. Could you grab some malasadas while you're there?" Danny nodded and was gone, and Kono leaned against the computer.

She no longer had the desire to cry. She wasn't sure she'd ever be able to cry again with all the emotions running through her head.

Whether she and Danny wanted to accept it or not, they both knew exactly whose voice that had been.

But how was he there? And why?

And how was she supposed to exact revenge for Chin on one of their best friends?

* * *

A/N: Aloha! It's the moment we've all been waiting for, the big reveal! And, no, it wasn't as dramatic as it could have been...(maybe because the drama's been set aside for later use ;) )

I'm sorry that I didn't get around to thanking all of you who reviewed this time 'round, but know that I read and appreciate all of the reviews that come in. I'll be working on the next chapter tomorrow, so it should be ready to go by tomorrow or Friday. If I have the time, maybe I'll even get the next Danny chapter done and get back to the regular posting schedule on Saturday...I don't know yet.

Anyhow, mahalo for reading! See you next time!


	22. Blank 2

The house looked exactly like every other house on the block, just like the warehouse had been exactly like all the other warehouses. He wasn't sure why it felt different; after all, a building was a building, and just as functional no matter what shape it came in.

It felt different all the same.

He heard a high-pitched shriek as he knocked on the door. He turned with his hand on his gun, ready to strike at whatever danger had just approached, but a cacophony of giggles stopped him in his tracks. The shriek was from a young child, who was fending off a group of bigger kids. All of them were armed with large, brightly-colored weapons that didn't seem to have real bullets. A gun that shot water? A water gun? He'd never heard of such a thing.

The door opened behind him, and a low voice grunted. "You cleaned up."

"Yeah." He watched the occupant of the house watch him. The man was obese, sweaty, and filthy, and his dark eyes gleamed with cruelty and intelligence.

"Whatever. The boss had to take off for a while, but we've got a little show we can watch before we get down to business."

He followed the brutish man into the house, but he glanced over his shoulder at the children before shutting the door. A boy with dark hair had switched sides to fight alongside the little girl, and though her hair was much lighter they seemed to look alike. A strange feeling rose in his chest, but he tamped it down and closed the door. "What's this show, then?"

The other man grunted once more as he narrowed his eyes at a computer screen. "Well, I guess it isn't quite ready to start yet. We'll have to go over tomorrow's plans first."

"Tomorrow? What's happening tomorrow? Am I going to find out how I know Chin Ho Kelly?"

The man rolled his eyes and thrust a large pair of headphones into his hands. "Put these on."

"Why?" he asked, but his hands were already following orders. The headphones were loose, and he found himself having to clamp his hands over his ears to keep them on.

There was a strange popping noise, and then static. As his mind began to drift, he thought he heard words underneath the static. Pop. Static and words. Pop. Static and words. Pop. Pop.

When he took off the headphones and opened his eyes, the large man was watching a game of soccer disinterestedly. "So, Grunts, tomorrow."

With another grunt, the man turned and raised his eyebrows. "Excuse me?" When he didn't respond, Grunts sighed and shook his head. "Of all the…whatever. Chin Ho Kelly."

"Yeah, that cop I shot today. What about him?" Even as the words rolled off his tongue, his mind sought for the answer to the question. Wasn't there something else about Chin Ho Kelly? Didn't he…didn't…

Obviously there wasn't, or he would remember.

The grunt became a hoarse giggle. "Sounds about right. Well, we'll get to him later on. For now, how about we look at our plan for tomorrow." Abandoning the soccer match, Grunts stood up and stumped into another room. He blithely followed behind, his mind still distracted by some thought that wasn't there.

It was a bedroom of sorts, but every surface save the bed and part of the floor was covered in photographs. His head spun as he took all of them in.

A large, dark man who was often inside a yellow food truck.

A Hawaiian woman who sometimes wore a badge and sometimes surfed.

A woman who sometimes wore a lab coat and sometimes sat with Chin Ho Kelly, who was also featured in some photos.

A blond man who usually wore yet another badge and a tie.

A young girl with dark pigtails who wore a school uniform more often than not.

A young blonde woman with bags under her eyes.

A bald man with a weathered face and a hardened body.

A woman with dark hair and dark eyes who often wore camouflage.

As quickly as the dizziness set in, a memory of static erased it. He blinked and looked to Grunts. "What's all this?"

"Potential targets. You'll notice that some of the people aren't in as many photos. That blonde girly, for example, she's not as big a target. That doctor, she ain't either, and that bald guy's no longer an issue." Grunts gestured to a large board in the middle of one wall, which featured close-ups of each face. "That's why he's got a big X through him."

"But he doesn't," he pointed out. The brutish man grunted and turned to the board, only to grunt again. "Is he still an issue, then?"

"That's weird…I could have sworn…" They stood in silence for a few seconds before Grunts took the red marker hanging from the board and crossed out the bald man's face. "Definitely not an issue. We _should_ have crossed out the little thing, too, but the boss changed his mind and told you to go kill Sang Min."

"Right, that was her. And that blond man, and that lady cop, they were both there too, weren't they? Along with Chin Ho Kelly." He looked to his suddenly-nervous companion, but when he didn't say anything more Grunts relaxed.

"Exactly. They're all connected to each other in some way or another. You gonna be okay killing the girl? Because that'll have to happen sometime."

His stomach twisted a little bit at that. "I'm not a child killer."

"You will be, or you'll be dead. The boss is just waiting for the right moment, and that should actually be here soon." He pointed with the marker at the blond man and grunted. "See, this is your mission tomorrow morning. You'll be working with a friend of mine, and he's gonna lure this one into the warehouse. Your job is to make sure there's no one else around there and then to join up with my friend to coax some information out of him."

"Like what kind of information?"

Grunts grunted, but before he could speak his phone rang. He looked at the screen and smirked. "I was hoping for this. Yeah," he said into the phone. A tinny voice reached his ears, and Grunts' smirk broadened. "Right on that, boss. Oh, and it seemed to have actually worked this time. Good call on leaving the recording again. See you later." He put his phone in his pocket and giggled wheezily. "Showtime, my friend."

"Are we friends?" he asked in surprise as Grunts left the room of faces.

"It's a figure of speech!" the other man said loudly. He started to follow behind, but a photo caught his eye.

The dark-haired woman was sitting on a beach in casual clothes, her hair pulled away from her face. She was crying, her eyes swollen and red and her cheeks blotchy. The beach itself looked so familiar, but the sight of her crying was the opposite. He brushed her face with his thumb, smearing the glossy surface of the photo in an effort to wipe her tears away. His effort was ineffective, and the pained sensation in his chest made him realize that he knew her.

"Get out here!" Grunts shouted, and he jumped and started on his way. In the trip down the hall, he managed to convince himself that the beach was familiar only for looking like every other beach on the island, and that the woman could be one of thousands. By the time he joined Grunts by the latter's computer screen, he had forgotten the incident entirely. "Here goes nothing."

"What's going on, exactly?"

Grunts smirked. "The boss has connections all over the island. Since you failed to get rid of Kelly, he's making use of one of those connections. A nurse at the hospital owes him a favor, so she's going to help things along. We've got a front row seat, so the boss has proof whether or not it'll work."

Grunts' words made him feel sick, but he couldn't figure out quite why. The video they watched jumped up and down erratically, jostled by the mere act of its owner walking, and his stomach seemed to follow the motions. "Oh, Dr. Kelly, your husband's family wants a word in the lobby."

"Tell them they're getting ready to prep him for surgery," said a woman. Her eyes weren't visible, but her mouth was turned downwards.

"They're making a scene, honestly, and I don't think I or anyone else can calm them down unless you go out and give them an update. I'll watch him for now."

The doctor sighed. "Fine, but if they make another attempt to have me barred from the room I'll have them thrown from the hospital, in-laws or not."

The woman behind the camera chuckled, but the sound died from her throat as the camera turned to the man lying in the hospital bed. Chin Ho Kelly.

The cop was much paler than he had been upon his entrance into the alley. Dark circles had formed under his eyes, and though he was unconscious his face seemed to be screwed up in pain.

_I did this._

The nurse touched his arm, murmured something inaudible, and then shuffled around the lines of his IV. A syringe came into view briefly, just long enough for a test plunge to spurt into the air, before dipping back down again.

Several seconds passed before the camera moved away from the IV. A muffled thud reached the camera's microphone, and the nurse turned back to the man's face as footsteps patted into the room. "Thanks for watching him, Polina."

"No problem, Malia. How'd it go?"

"By the time I got out to talk to them, they'd decided they didn't want to talk to me until after surgery." The near-constant series of beeps suddenly stopped, then started up again in an irregular pattern. "What?"

"Hey, what's happening?" the nurse asked. Grunts laughed as the camera caught the doctor's horrified expression and the now blaring heart monitor in one shot.

He didn't laugh. That doctor's eyes were panicked, and tearful, and his chest hurt again just looking at her.

The nurse with the camera had called her Dr. Kelly. He'd been responsible for almost killing this woman's husband, and now he was watching him die all over again.

Something about the situation made his stomach twist, and he barely made it to the nearby trashcan before his stomach evacuated its contents.

* * *

A/N: Aloha! I'm feeling a bit Hobbitish today, and since Hobbits do the whole reverse-gifting thing on their birthday...here's my birthday present to all of my lovely readers.

I should have the next chapter out on Tuesday. Honestly, this segment of the story is beginning to wind down, I think. Maybe two weeks and we'll be finished with it. Crazy, but true.

Mahalo for all your support, and know that I appreciate each and every one of you greatly. Thanks for making this whole writing thing worth it!


	23. Danny 8

Danny stood outside the café, wishing desperately for the familiar smell of Paul's Joe back home. Paul didn't like flowers and smoked cigars outside his front door on a regular basis, whereas this coffee shop surrounded itself with floral arrangements, trees, and "No Smoking" signs. The unfamiliar perfume made it difficult for him to relax, and he contemplated finding a tobacco store to buy a cigar just for the smell. Maybe that would rid him of the overpowering scent of hibiscus and the memories of the barista laughing at his tampon.

The warmth from the fresh malasadas at his side and the vision of a burly tobacco salesman chuckling at his makeshift nose plug made up his mind for him, and he began the trek back to headquarters with a bilious feeling rising from his heart.

He had recognized the timbre of Steve's voice the moment he had heard it. Even though it was disguised by a rasp and some phlegm, Danny's mind had immediately connected it with the adrenaline-fueled voice of his partner. It was the same voice he used when something went wrong or when he had just narrowly gotten himself out of a tight spot. The day he had hung someone from a roof for interrogation, he had used that exact tone.

Danny was now in the most crazily precarious situation of his life. Even treading the waters of attempting to keep his former wife hadn't seemed as mentally daunting as his current assignment, because then there had been someone to help him stay sane, someone for him to focus on and fight for.

Grace wouldn't be able to help him this time. She wasn't involved, couldn't become involved.

Avenging Chin Ho and finding Steve had seemed to be cut from black-and-white cloth. Neither one had seemed inherently complicated.

Now, they kind of seemed to be the same thing. The cloth had bypassed grey and warped into some color that didn't exist on the light spectrum, all the colors mashed together and watered down with utter confusion and betrayal. Danny's mission had just become finding, arresting, and helping to convict his best friend, who had supposedly been kidnapped over two years ago.

He no longer knew what to think. Had Steve pulled the wool over all of their eyes? Had he been working for Wo Fat the entire time, just waiting to escape his new position at the helm of Five-0 and betray his new friends?

No. No, Danny couldn't believe that. Couldn't let himself even start to believe it. And yet…there was still a niggling doubt in his mind.

Steve was definitely on the island, but he hadn't contacted any of them. He hadn't been home, he hadn't gone to the shrimp truck, he hadn't even shown up to help when Grace had been—

Shit. Grace. Sang Min. Boom, headshot.

Steven McGarrett was an excellent sniper. When Danny had dug into his files, his marksmanship scores had been a little frightening, but that had eventually become a reassurance. After all, he and Danny were on the same team. Those sharpshooting skills had done them all well, but if Steve was working for the enemy…

"By shooting Sang Min, he saved Grace's life," he chided himself as he elbowed the handicapped button and walked through the door.

Maybe Steve was undercover. Maybe he had infiltrated Wo Fat's organization and was working to undermine him. He could have dedicated himself to stopping the crime lord's plots, and when he had heard that Sang Min was going to kidnap Gracie he foiled the plan by killing him.

"He still shot Chin Ho, though," he said aloud, drawing attention from a couple of suits in the lobby. He ignored their raised eyebrows and muttered comments about the tampon. If he hadn't still been able to feel his nose bleeding, he'd have ditched it in the nearest trashcan.

Why would a Steve who was working against Wo Fat from within shoot a member of his ohana? And if he had, in fact, turned to Wo Fat's side, why did he call for help? Why not leave Chin there to die?

His thoughts were cut off by Kono as he entered the office. "Took you long enough."

"Long line," he said quietly. She snorted and took one of the cups of coffee and the donuts from him. "Look, we need to get the rest of the information from the scene, so why don't we go down to Fong's?"

"Way ahead of you, brah," she replied, gesturing to the screens behind her. "Charlie just sent us his latest findings, but he's still working on some of it. It turns out that the one room by the alley was pretty much a setup."

"Huh? A setup for what?"

She expanded one of the photos of the bloody room. "All of these puddles but this one," she waved a malasada at a pool of blood in the closet, "are made of fake blood. Those footsteps are pretty hard to see from the interior door, and apparently whoever did the interior decorating wanted to make sure anyone looking around went inside to investigate further-"

"And follow the blood outside, where an ambush would be waiting." Danny sipped his coffee and shook his head. "That's insane."

"Well, it also explains why some of those pools still looked wet. Fake blood looks fresh for a long time." Kono inhaled the rest of her malasada. She gagged slightly on it when her phone began to ring, and she thrust it at Danny to answer as she chugged some coffee to clear her throat.

"Officer Kalakaua," he said.

"This isn't Kono," a man said in confusion. "Who are you?"

"Her partner, Danny Williams. She'll be right with you," he said as Kono finally managed to swallow the rest of her donut and reached for the phone once more. She put it on speaker.

"Hello?"

"Kono, it's Ping."

"Cousin? What's wrong?" Kono's eyes filled with concern. "I thought Chin was doing better."

"Not anymore. Kono, you need to get down here." Danny's chest tightened in concern at the tone in Ping's voice. "Malia said you'd want to see him before…"

"He's…he's not…" Kono sobbed. "He can't be dying!"

"I'm sorry. Don't tell my mother I called you, but get here as soon as you can. I have to go." Ping cut off the call, and Kono wailed.

"Let's go." Danny took her coffee cup away and set it on the table as her hands started to shake. "I'll drive."

"But he's…" Kono seemed to be unable to continue her train of thought as a wave of sobs took over, and Danny led her from the office, pulling the tampon from his nose and throwing it out as they exited.

* * *

The drive to the hospital had been nearly unbearable. Danny had barely been able to keep his own tears in check, and Kono was an absolute mess. Her family hadn't made things much easier once they arrived, with most of them shouting insults and demanding they leave. Ping, however, was waiting to escort Kono to Chin Ho's room. Danny had made sure she was safely inside the trauma center before leaving the ER and returning to his car.

He still had a case to investigate, partner or no.

After sitting alone in his car for several minutes, he had made for the coroner's office. Of all the friends he'd had in Hawaii, Dr. Max Bergman was the only one Danny hadn't encountered as yet. The traffic had picked up somewhat, but thirty minutes later he strode into the ME's office with a heavy heart.

He was greeted by a piano rendition of "Love Potion No. 9" upon entering the lab. His friend sat at his upright piano, banging away on the keys and swaying back and forth. Before Danny could say anything, Max raised a single finger for silence and continued his playing, finishing with a trill reminiscent of their first meeting.

When Max stood, he didn't look in Danny's direction. "I presume you're here for the John Doe who shot Chin Ho Kelly?"

"Yeah. It's been a-" Max walked right past Danny without meeting his eyes and led the way to his examination room, talking over the detective.

"Our victim, if you can call him such, is a male, approximately 32 in age. 5'11, 230 pounds, native Hawaiian ancestry. Cause of death is two gunshot wounds to the forehead, both from the same gun."

"Two shots to the forehead? Some aim," Danny replied. "Then again, since our prime suspect is a former Navy SEAL, sharpshooting is to be expected."

Again, Max ignored him. "His hands tested positive for GSR, as was expected, meaning this man did indeed shoot. I cannot say for certain whether his gun was responsible for the trauma to Captain Kelly, but as he was shooting from behind a man who was shot in the back, it is logical to conclude that this man tried to kill the captain."

"Yeah, and he may have succeeded," Danny said.

"I was told that Captain Kelly survived the shooting," Max said. He finally looked Danny square in the face, and his jaw dropped slightly. "Detective Williams!"

"Nice to see you again, Max," Danny responded. "Wish it were under better circumstances, though."

Dr. Bergman blinked owlishly several times before shaking his head. "I suppose your presence here indicates that you have returned to HPD?"

"Actually, I'm the head of Five-0 for the time being, but I am working the case." Danny looked back to the dead man. "Is there anything that might give us a clue as to who he is? He's showing up in our database as Adam Noshimuri, who is currently in a hospital in a comatose state."

"How strange," Max murmured. "I recently read in a journal about a case where the DNA for several victims of a serial killer was swapped out for the investigating officers. Perhaps our SEAL suspect got some help from that killer. I can get you the details of the case, so perhaps you can confer with the investigating officers for advice."

"I'm one of the investigating officers, Max," Danny grumbled. "And I have bigger problems than working out how the database was hacked at the moment. Chin Ho took a sudden turn for the worse, and the doctors don't think they can save him this time."

Max gripped the side of the examination table. "I wish there was more I could do to help, but I can't even help you identify this man, his probable killer. He has no major scarring, no tattoos, not even a particularly strange feature that might ring a bell in some people's memories."

"Great." Danny sighed before turning to leave. "I'll keep you posted, Max. Thanks anyhow."

"You are quite welcome."

As he climbed back into his car, Danny mentally cursed the powers that be for laying such a case on his shoulders. How could one person handle all of this?

A flash of white caught his eye as he moved to start the engine: the malasada bag. Kono had apparently brought them along unconsciously.

He bit into one of the donuts and squeezed his eyes shut. He had to finish this, for Chin Ho…and for Steve.

* * *

A/N: Aloha! Check it out, I'm posting on time today! Hopefully this means I'll stay on schedule for the duration...hopefully.

Mahalo for all of your support, my friends!


	24. Kono 8

"If he's going to survive this, he'll have to do it on his own. We've done everything we can for the time being."

Kono refrained from going into Chin Ho's room as his parents moaned. Ping had meant well, but approaching her cousin would only bring more trouble. This was as close as she could get to him for now.

For the rest of his life.

"What happened?" her aunt said thickly. "He was well enough to get surgery a half hour ago."

"Your son suffered a sudden heart attack, and his heart stopped shortly after. While we were able to resuscitate him once more, his vitals are incredibly unstable. The heart attack could have caused damage to his lungs, or our shocks could have damaged his already injured kidneys. He almost appears to have suffered an allergic reaction to something, but…" The speaker stopped, and Malia coughed and spoke up.

"Makuahine, Makuakane, perhaps you should return to the waiting area. If he does go further downhill, I'll send for you immediately. The stress of having so many people in such a small room isn't good for him or anyone else, and I am not leaving my husband."

Kono's aunt snorted angrily, but apparently was too emotional to start another argument; Kono shrank against the wall and prayed that her aunt and uncle wouldn't notice her as they went back to the waiting room. Her prayers were answered as they walked past her with puffy eyes and hands full of tissues. When they were almost to the double doors, she ducked into Chin Ho's room and gasped.

Her cousin's normally bronze skin was a strange combination of white and red, both of which appeared in splotches across his body. His forehead was beaded with sweat, and he looked strangely swollen. Malia and another doctor were standing on either side of his bed, but Malia walked to take Kono's hand when she looked up. "I'm glad you came, Kono. He'd want you to see him, even if it's just for a minute."

"Ping said he was dying." Kono and Malia walked back to Chin's side, and Kono took his hand. It was feverish.

Malia sniffled. "We brought him back once, but if his body can't balance things out…"

"This fever and his oxygen levels are my main concerns at the moment," the other doctor said. "Unfortunately, even if his body temperature regulates, there could be damage. The danger of infection setting in grows with every minute those bullets stay inside him, but he's nowhere near stable enough for surgery."

Kono brushed the hair from her cousin's damp forehead and bent to kiss him. "Can I do anything?"

"Talk to him for a minute before you go. Some people, myself included, think it could help." Malia smiled down at her husband even as a tear fell from her cheek. "Chin, honey, Kono's here to see you."

"H-hey," she said awkwardly, suddenly unsure of herself. She felt like she was talking to a mannequin. "You need to get better soon, alright?"

There was no change, and she almost drew back. Malia, however, pushed her back towards the bed. "Don't leave without saying goodbye, Kono. It may be…"

_It may be your last chance._ Kono didn't need to hear the words to know what Malia meant, and the realization brought tears to her own eyes. "Chin, you can't die, okay? You can't. Danny and me, we're back on Five-0, but we can't crack this case without you. I'll say goodbye, but only if you promise you'll say aloha to me later."

Again, there was no response, but Malia seemed satisfied. "Thanks. And…are you really back on Five-0?"

"Yes."

"Then you're going to find whoever did this and bring them to full justice, right?" Malia's gaze turned hard for a split second, as if she were imagining what her full justice would be.

"It isn't so simple, Malia," she said quietly. "Our prime suspect isn't going to be easy to get."

"I have faith in you, cousin," Malia said with a sad smile. "_We_ have faith in you."

Kono nodded and left the room. She hadn't yet made it down the hall when the alarms began again, and nurses rushed into Chin Ho's room with a cart full of equipment. Malia somehow got shoved into the hallway, her face hysterical, and Kono rushed to wrap her up in a hug. They fell to their knees right there in the hallway, both sobbing as the sounds of an attempted resuscitation flowed from the room.

If Chin died, Kono didn't know if she'd be able to function properly again. She didn't know if she'd ever be able to look at her badge or her uniform or even her own reflection without breaking down, or if she'd be able to shoot or surf without tears invading her eyes.

She only knew one thing.

If Chin Ho died, she was going to kill the man responsible.

Even if that man was Steven McGarrett.

* * *

A/N: Sorry for the late post! It's been a hectic week with all our Fourth of July celebrations 'round here.

We're getting down to the last chapters of this installment! You'll get a chapter this Tuesday and then on Thursday, and that'll be that. It's been a fun ride so far, and I'm excited to move on to the next project.

Mahalo, my friends!


	25. Blank 3

"I have every confidence that Chin Ho Kelly will not make it through the day."

He woke up to a voice every bit as sharp as the face and memories it stirred within him. He could feel the prick of a needle in his neck and a knife in his back, could see the angles of a madly grinning face.

His boss was back. The voices in his head seemed far away, as if he had just been dreaming them. He probably had been dreaming them.

"You had every confidence that our guest wouldn't start remembering his past, so you'll forgive me if I don't have every confidence in _your_ every confidence." He sat up and jumped at the clatter of headphones hitting the floor. He hadn't fallen asleep listening to something…had he? "Besides, Kelly's lasted this long already."

"Yes, but they've nearly lost him several times since our drug-induced setback. The human body can only take so much stress. If he appears to have beaten the odds after all, Polina is ready and waiting to administer another dose of insulin." He crept nearer to the bedroom door and pressed himself against the wall. Listening felt right and wrong at the time; he doubted his boss would appreciate him eavesdropping.

"If you say so. As for me, I'm not banking on a novice like her. How's everything else coming along?"

"Brilliantly. Denning has done exactly as I predicted and reformed Five-0, and my sources tell me that they're well on their way to cracking the case wide open, if indeed they haven't done so already." His boss chuckled. "I do hope to obtain a copy of their reaction to the 911 call. I've heard it was more than enjoyable."

"If you hadn't insisted on splitting the production up, you'd have it available right here," Grunts complained. Neither man spoke after that.

His mind reeled with all of the information he'd just internalized. His boss was keeping tabs on a governor, presumably the governor of Hawaii, and Chin Ho Kelly wasn't yet dead. Something about Five-0...he felt like that should have some memories attached to it, but just like everything about his past, he couldn't quite draw them to the surface. One tiny, dark corner of his mind came to attention as he struggled to remember, and he had the briefest flash of a large room with several computer screens hanging on one wall. The image was gone before he could really focus on it, and he pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.

"Have you briefed him on today's mission?" His boss's voice broke through the heavy silence, startling him.

"Twice before he went to La La Land, but he was weird the whole time. Couldn't sit still, wouldn't pay attention…I started the recording you left for him on before I went to sleep, so hopefully that helps keep him focused. Are you sure we should be moving him to strictly audio already?"

His breath caught in his chest. Who were they talking about, and why did the dark corner of his mind suddenly want to find out so badly?

"For a man with so little experience in this line of work, you are simply brimming with suggestions this morning, aren't you?" He winced at his boss's terse tone and imagined Grunts was doing the same. "I hired you to do what I said, not critique it."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

"You do raise a valid point, however." Someone began to pace the living room floor. He pressed himself closer to the wall and opened the door slightly to watch. "Our guest, as you defined him as earlier, has been trained to withstand torture of the most exquisite variety. Breaking him was not and is still not an easy task; his subconscious mind is still withholding information about Shelburne, information that I am certain he possesses. At this point, the only way to mold him to my whims is to use a combination of factors."

"So why just the audio now, sir? If you don't mind me asking."

The footsteps stopped. "I am afraid that I became a little too effective in my last meeting with him. Had Polina not stolen some blood just in case, I doubt he would have made it through the session. His body needs a chance to recover, and his mind is understandably operating at a lower level during his recuperation, thus making the audio files sufficient."

"I see. Well, maybe that explains why he was so out of touch last night after we watched our nearly-snuff film."

His mind reeled again and he sucked in a breath. The nearly-snuff film had to be the hidden camera broadcast of the nurse's attempt at killing Captain Kelly. He had been the one to watch that with Grunts.

They were talking about _him_. Torturing _him_. Breaking _him_. Almost killing _him_.

He didn't know how to cope with this revelation. That dark corner of his mind seemed to taunt him, brightened like it had always known what was really happening. The larger part of his mind screamed for him to rush out and confront the men, but that same corner told him to just go with the plans and wait for a better moment.

He listened to the small corner.

"Go and wake him. I want to go over the plans once more."

He rushed back to the bed and picked up the headphones, placing them back near his ears as Grunts' heavy footsteps clomped towards the room. As the door opened, he suddenly realized how sore he was. His entire body seemed to ache with new pains, but that corner of his mind told him that those pains had been there for a long time, just covered up by recordings like the one still playing through those earphones.

"Hey, get up. We've got work to do." The headphones disappeared, and he opened his eyes to meet Grunts' glare. "The boss is waiting."

"What time is it?" he murmured.

"Almost seven-thirty, meaning you're running behind already. C'mon, let's go."

He and the portly man walked back into the living room, where their boss stood in front of a large television screen. The Asian man was the very image of militarism, with his hands folded neatly in the small of his back, his legs stiff and still, and his head held high. His face didn't have to be visible for him to radiate power. God, he hated him. Drawing upon some part of himself he hadn't known existed, he managed to control his temper. "Sir."

"I trust you are ready for your mission?" He couldn't answer because, as Grunts had said earlier, he had been too distracted the previous evening to get the full scoop. His boss's shoulders stiffened further. "When I ask you a question, I expect an answer."

"Not exactly, sir." He coughed as phlegm began to form in his throat again. Grunts shoved a pill and a bottle of water into his hands.

"Then I suggest you prepare yourself, because you leave in five minutes." His boss moved to the side to reveal a photo of the blond man. He had to choke back a smile at the sight of the man with a large wad of material and a string hanging from his nose, but also at the brown bag one of his hands clutched. The scent of warm sugar and fried dough wafted from that corner of his mind. "Is something funny?"

"Just his face, sir. He doesn't look very happy."

His boss sighed. "He should look less happy in about two hours. Now, about your mission…"

* * *

"Help, thief!" He pointed his gun at the steel door of one of the warehouses and pulled the trigger twice. "Help!"

Just as his boss had planned, footsteps pounded towards the warehouse he stood by. The officer tasked with guarding the crime scene leaped around the corner, reaching for his gun and his radio simultaneously. The novice was too late, however, and was struck down with a sound hit to the back of his head. Blood began to pour from the wound before he hit the ground.

He cursed and pushed down on the cop's wound, hoping to staunch it in case he began to bleed out. He didn't want more deaths on his conscience than necessary, particularly with that once dark corner of his mind ever brightening and expanding, but he hadn't worked out how to avoid them altogether.

After several seconds of profuse bleeding, the flow began to ebb. He pulled a roll of gauze he'd stolen from Grunts from his pocket and used it to haphazardly wrap the officer's head before injecting him with a sedative. His job was to keep this officer away from the warehouse, and even if he wasn't going to kill him he couldn't bring himself to not at least attempt to comply with the mission.

As he began his trek back to the crime scene, a flash of light and a grumble caught his attention. The sun glinted off a silver car door as the blond man slammed it shut and ducked under the yellow tape. He didn't even check to make sure he was alone first.

Either he was a bad cop or in a hurry. He suspected the latter.

He sped up his pace to a jog when he heard shouting from the cordoned-off warehouse. Ducking inside brought the shouts to a form of clarity, and he couldn't help but smirk. "…swear on all things holy to you and yours, I am going to shoot you square in the face if you don't drop that weapon this very instance. Do not test me, because I am not in the mood for games right now."

"Why don't you drop yours instead?" The blond man whirled around as he approached with his gun drawn. "Two against one doesn't seem like real good odds to me."

The blond man made a strange choked sound as his mouth opened and closed several times. His partner barked a laugh from the other side of the warehouse at the noise. "What's the matter, wise guy? Can't take a loss?"

The words seemed to bring the blond man back to reality, and he tightened his grip on his SIG. "If you think I'm going down that easy, you're insane."

"I don't think you have much of a choice," he said.

"You obviously can't kill me. You brought me all the way down here instead of sniping me like you did Sang Min, so you must want me for something." He blinked. "Oh, yeah, I know it was you who offed him. I guess I should really thank you for saving my little girl, but I'm really not in the mood right now seeing as you have an effing gun pointed at my face, so maybe-"

"Enough!" his partner shouted. "Last warning, pig. Drop it or die."

The blond man didn't move his gaze. "If you say so."

It happened so quickly that he didn't have time to react. His partner shot, but the cop was faster, having rolled to the side and ducked behind some large crates before he could even get close enough to grab him. He growled and gestured for his partner to go around the other way as he followed the cop's footsteps.

He hadn't expected the blond man to stop in his tracks a few seconds into the race. "Look, you have to listen to me. I can help you, but you have to come with me. I know you shot Chin, but I also know you wouldn't have done it unless something was very wrong. I just...I can't do it again. Please don't do that to me again."

"You don't know anything about me!" he said loudly. His voice cracked as his throat thickened, but he couldn't tell if it was his illness or emotion that made it do so. The cop flinched at the words, like they were a bullet into his own clavicle. "What makes you think I didn't enjoy sticking that cop like the pig he was?!"

The blond man sucked in a deep breath. "I heard the 911 call. You were devastated, and I get that. Don't make the same mistake again."

He had been devastated. How had he forgotten? He'd been absolutely torn up about shooting Chin Ho Kelly, especially after he heard his name. And when that idiot had come along and shot him in the back, he'd wanted to die himself.

But why? Why did he feel that way? Why had he forgotten? Why couldn't he think clearly? Why did this stupid blond cop make so much sense? "Why?!" he shouted aloud, stomping his foot in fury at his own sieve-like mind.

"Don't move or your brains're gonna be all over this factory floor." His partner had sneaked up on the cop and put his gun to his head. "One false move and blam. Drop your gun, now."

The cop squeezed his eyes shut in frustration but did as he was instructed. The metallic thud it made echoed throughout the factory, and the sound made his head ache.

"Good man. But you know, it's probably going to end up there anyhow, once we've milked you for information." The other man laughed. "Which do you prefer, haole pig? Should we kill your daughter in front of you, or should we let her watch you die first?"

The cop's eyes nearly bugged out of his head. "If you touch a hair on Grace's head, you will die. That's a promise."

Grace. That name sounded almost as familiar as Chin Ho Kelly.

"Well you won't be able to do anything about it, now will you?"

The cop's eyes refocused on his. "No, but I won't have to. Will I, Steven?"

Steven?

"You'd kill anybody who tried to hurt Gracie."

And he realized that the cop was right.

That beautiful, fragile little girl would never be hurt on his watch.

And his name was Steven.

He was Steven McGarrett. Steve. Lieutenant Commander McGarrett. The ever-expanding part of his mind that seemed to have some sort of understanding rejoiced at the revelation.

"Enough talking! Get a move on." The other gunman cocked his gun and pressed it into the cop's head.

Steve lost control at the gesture. Before he knew what he was doing, his aim had switched from the haole's forehead to the Hawaiian's, and his thumb had pulled back the hammer, and his finger had pulled the trigger.

And the cop scurried away from the hands that held him as a hole bloomed between the other gunman's eyes. The large man swayed for a moment before stumbling backwards into a crate, his gun clattering to the floor. He slid down to join it, his chest no longer moving and his eyes still wide open.

His breath quickening, Steve turned his weapon back on the cop, hoping to salvage the mission even in the light of his betrayal, but the blond had already gotten to his gun. He raised it to meet Steve's.

As they stood, Steve's mind began to collapse. Everything but the guns and the cop's face began to fade into darkness, and his thoughts drifted away. He wasn't sure he would be able to fight much more.

He wasn't sure he wanted to.

* * *

A/N: Aloha! Since my last chapter was kind of lacking in substance and length, I decided to give you an extra long submission today. And what a joy this one was to write!

I've actually had the next (last!) chapter of this story written since before I even posted it. Remember that dream I said I had of a confrontation between two characters? You just read the first half of it. Since I already have it done, I'll get it up for all ya'll tomorrow. That way you won't have to wait _too_ long for some resolution.

Mahalo once again to Forest Rose for her help, and to everyone who reviewed! I've become rather slackadaisy about replying, but I still read every single review and I greatly appreciate them.

Until next time, friends!


	26. Come Home

A/N: The lyrics are from OneRebublic's "Come Home". I highly encourage you to listen to the song while reading this chapter (it's available on YouTube) because it really speaks to the state of Danny and Steve's bromance in my little universe. More on the flipside; enjoy!

* * *

_Everything I can't be_

_Is everything you should be_

_That's why I need you here_

* * *

They watched each other curiously, muscles tense, guns drawn. Each waited for the other to make a move. Seconds ticked by. A minute. Two.

Steve was the first to lower his guard. That would have surprised Danny enough if Steve's SEAL-stern face hadn't crumpled at the same moment. Danny dropped his hands to his side as his…as Steve collapsed. He was crying. Crying.

"What—what happened to me?" Steve asked thickly. His bloody hands moved to cover his face, his frail body sagged under the weight he had finally allowed to crash down on him.

"I don't know," Danny whispered. Steve's head jerked up, as if he had forgotten Danny was in the warehouse. "I don't know."

"What?" Steve asked sharply. His eyes were still blurred with tears, but a glimmer of recognition seemed to light them. "What…who are you?"

Danny moved to sit nearer to the broken man, half-expecting him to attack again. Steve just watched him. "I'm Danny. Remember?"

"Danny…" Steve stared, his eyes narrowing in concentration as they seemed to trace Danny's face. He'd nearly given up hope of any recollection when those gray eyes widened once more. "Danny Williams? Danno?"

"Yeah."

Their gazes held for a moment longer before their arms were wrapped around each other, and Steve was sobbing into Danny's shoulder, and Danny was doing his best not to follow suit.

For that moment, the two men were removed from their surroundings, from their grim reality. The body of Wo Fat's henchman was not watching them through glazed, unseeing eyes. Chin was not dying. Steve was not a fugitive.

For that moment, the first such in too many days, Danny and Steve were at peace.

They were together again.

They were home.

* * *

_So hear this now:_

_Come home_

_Come home_

'_cause I've been waiting for you_

_For so long_

_For so long_

_So come home_

* * *

A/N: And there you have it. Steve and Danno, together again. T_T

But this isn't to say our story is finished. Not even close to it, my friends. Be on the lookout for the next installment of the trilogy, "I'm Coming Home", near the beginning of August.

For now, mahalo to everybody for the continuous support. It means the world to me to know that so many of you enjoyed my writing, and I can't wait to come back with now.

Aloha.


	27. Announcement!

A/N: Howdy everyone!

Just wanted to let you know that the sequel is now officially published! I'm excited to start the second leg of this journey, and I hope you'll all join me.

Mahalo!


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